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My Collection: PlayStation Vita

Sunday, March 17th, 2024

Sony released the Vita in Japan in 2011, and about a year later in the USA. It wasn’t an immediate success, with consumers mostly preferring the cheaper cost and larger game library of the 3DS. I didn’t get mine until 2014, by which time it had already stalled commercially.

It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the system, and to this day it remains my favourite of all the Sony consoles. The beautiful OLED screen was ahead of its time, and the ergonomics of the device made it a joy to play even for long periods.

Foremost for me were the games. By this time the Vita had been abandoned by most western developers, and in particular the big-name AAA games were nonexistent on the device. It had become an enthusiasts machine, with a notable abundance of Japanese RPGs, visual novels and quirky indie games. As a big fan of JRPGs I went all-in, and the Vita become my foremost handheld for many years.

The vita was a cartridge based system, and the carts are very similar in size to Switch cartridges. There was no region lock, so you could buy games from any country and they worked fine.

The Vita supported trophies as well – which I enjoyed at the time – and had a robust digital store with lots of available software. It was the first handheld with a seamless online experience which worked well, and certain games were even better with online features.

The screen looks much better than these photos suggest: very bright and high resolution with ink-dark blacks. It was leagues better than the 3DS and to this day remains the best screen on any handheld (excluding phones and the OLED Switch). Even now when I fired it up after five years for a quick play I was very impressed with the screen quality.

In total – including digital games – I have 90 games for the system. Many are shown above, but I also have several collectors editions:

And promos (thanks to AW for these):

Notable games include two Vanillaware games, not the least of which – Dragon’s Crown – is one of my favourite games of all time:

The Vita was also the home of the Toukiden series, which in my opinion is the closest a clone has come to actually beating Monster Hunter. My save files for these three games exceed 500 hours in total:

I’ve also got an abundance of strange ‘girl games’ like these:

I have virtually no memory of even playing some of the above, and the Vita had loads of similar titles. Most are action or RPG games featuring a cast of cute anime girls. Often the gameplay took a backseat to the graphics, and the games were fun enough but hardly memorable.

As mentioned the Vita was regionless, but the majority of good games got a US release, so I didn’t buy too many Japanese games. Notable among my small collection is the Berserk ‘musou’ game which is exceptional and has extremely impressive bullet-hell-like boss fights, which is strange indeed for a 3rd person action game!

I have one Vita game that I never opened. I had already bought and played the game digitally, so when I bought the box set I never bothered opening it.

I also bought the above memory stick when it became clear the systems life was nearing its end. This was late in 2018, and the last game I purchased was in January 2019 during a trip to Japan.

By then the Vita was essentially a retired system. In March 2019 Sony announced they had stopped making the system, and support of the online store was cut back in early 2021. No successor was announced, and with the end of the Vita Sony left the handheld market for good.

While a few of my games are worth more than I paid, on the whole it’s not a system with a great deal of value and I have no plans to sell my collection. I own many great games I’d love to replay, and one day I hope to do just that!

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My Collections

Sunday, March 17th, 2024

For over ten years now, I’ve been making periodic posts about my game collection. This update indexes all those posts. Some are yet to come, and will be updated with links when I get to them.

Note that as of this index, most of the collections I’ve posted about over the years have been sold. Those that I no longer own have been identified.

My Collection: NES (sold)
My Collection: SNES (sold)
My Collection: Gameboy
My Collection: GBA
My Collection: Virtual Boy
My Collection: Pokemon Mini
My Collection: N64 (sold)
My Collection: Gamecube (sold)
My Collection: DS
My Collection: 3DS
My Collection: Wii & WiiU (sold)
My Collection: Switch

My Collection: Genesis (sold)
My Collection: Game Gear (sold)
My Collection: Saturn (sold)
My Collection: Dreamcast (sold)

My Collection: PS1 (sold)
My Collection: PS2 (sold)
My Collection: PSP
My Collection: PS3 & PS4 (sold)
My Collection: PS Vita

My Collection: XBox (sold)

My Collection: Wonderswan

My Collection: Neo-Geo Pocket Color

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Japan Pickups: Wizardry

Friday, January 12th, 2024

My Wizardry game collection ever-increases, and with the acquisition of the above three on this recent trip there’s now only two games in the series I don’t own. While neither seem especially rare or expensive, the fact remains I’ve never seen a copy of either in years of looking so the search continues!

I was very happy to find the above on this recent trip: a beautiful boxed copy of Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord for the MSX2! Note that the original (1987) price was 9800 Yen – about $65 – which was about two or three times more expensive than a computer game cost in the west in those days.

The game is on a cartridge, and from what I read only works on expanded versions of Japanese MSX computers. I daresay there’s not many of them left working, so there’s no question I’ll ever be able to play this. The box contains all sorts of goodies, but notably the miniature metal dragon statue that was originally included is missing.

The above are three hints guides for various Wizardry games. I found these in Osaka which was good because at about $15 each they were considerably less expensive than they would have been in Tokyo.

As with others I’ve previously shown here, the guides are beautiful books, packed with art and maps and lots of colour. It’s clear the authors of these books loved the games!

This small hardcover book is an oddity! Titled Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Wizardry it seems to be a sort of lore book of items and equipment from the first six games. Almost every entry also features a nice piece of line art. It seems to have very limited (if any) use as an actual game guide, but could perhaps serve as a RPG manual of sorts. While I love it, it’s hard to see why this was even published!

Speaking of RPG manuals, the above was an exciting pickup for me: it’s the monster manual for the original Wizardry RPG from the 1980s. It’s a small-sized paperback with a lovely cover by Jun Suemi, and I dearly wish I could read it since the machine-translations suggest it’s very lore-heavy on the monsters from the games.

As you know I also collect gamebooks, so I was extremely happy to find the above two for sale. Both are from the Futabasha Famicom Gamebook Series and are based on the first and third Wizardry games.

These are very traditional one-player gamebooks in the Fighting Fantasy mold featuring manga-style art and what appears to be a complex system based on the size of the adventure sheet! There’s almost 80 (!) books in this gamebook series including two other Wizardry ones; I wonder if I’ll ever find them?

Lets end with a story about ‘one that got away’. The above pic was taken in Osaka a few weeks ago, and shows me holding one of my holy grails: one of the two Jun Suemi Wizardry artbooks. This is the older and more expensive of the two, and the sticker price on this used book was about $170.

Normally I would have thrown my money at the cashier but I had already bought the book on Amazon a month earlier. The amazon order – coming from Japan – was to arrive while we were away but never did. A followup with the seller led to a refund, and no book. So I held one of my grails in my hand and didn’t buy it, and still don’t own it. 🙂

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The Strong

Saturday, December 16th, 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.

Posted in Art, Blog, Books, Books & Comics, Games, Retro, Toys | 2 Comments »

2023 In Games (Part 2)

Tuesday, December 12th, 2023

This past year I kept a list of all the games I played as well as how long I played them. My notes also included short reviews/thoughts, and here they all are.

With two exceptions (noted after the game name) every game was played on Switch. The time I played each for is in parenthesis at the end (X hours) but for games that I played less than about three hours this is excluded.

Tactics Ogre Reborn: The original is a masterpiece, but this remake – while pretty – is unfortunately hamstrung by some questionable balance adjustments. I gave up when it became exceedingly grindy. (11)

Rogue Legacy 2: A 2D roguelike so addictive I had to delete it lest it suck up too much of my time. Is it better than the first one? Undecided. (15)

Katana Kami: Weird controls and floaty combat mar this C-rank rogue clone. (10)

Live A Live: This remaster of the beloved SNES multi-scenario RPG is perhaps not as good as its reputation deserves. I beat it, but had no desire to see all the multiple endings. (25)

Picross X: Picbits vs Uzboross: Not enough Picross in this frenetic puzzle game. A good time-waster regardless. (5)

Dragons Dogma: Dark Arisen: I first beat this open-world RPG on PS3 eleven years ago, and KLS beat it about five years ago on PS4. Since I’d never played the expansion I returned for another full playthrough and had an absolute blast. One of the best RPGs of all time. (95)

Crystar: Tedious combat and half-baked gameplay loop failed to salvage a somewhat interesting story in this budget action-RPG. (20)

Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line: A fiendishly addictive rhythm/RPG hybrid bathed in Final Fantasy series nostalgia. Potential game of the year! (65)

Megaman Legacy Collection: Indisputable value, but holy cow are these old games punishing! (This collection contains nine old NES Megaman games; so far I’ve only played the first one briefly.)

Arkanoid Eternal Battle: A terrible online battle royale. Almost no players meant I could barely begin a match. Emulation of the original game is poor with a warped screen and bad controls. This should have been a free download.

Dragon Quest Treasures: A fun treasure hunt game with roots in mobile games that didn’t outstay its welcome. Would have been a great 3DS game. (35)

Mary Skelter 2: Competent but ultimately repetitive dungeon crawl. Lots of systems but itemization isn’t interesting and I would have preferred pixel art monsters. (12)

Demon’s Tilt: Nearly unplayable due to overly tiny graphics and erratic screen movement. I feel this digital pinball is misplaced on Switch and is probably a much better game than I experienced.

Octopath Traveler 2: A great sequel loaded with content, fun ‘systems’ and combat. Possibly overly long! (80)

Final Fantasy (GBA): Extremely replayable and always fun. I played this one on my GB Micro during my Oz/JP trip and beat it with an unconventional melee-only party. (17)

The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom: Sequel to one of the greatest games ever made that somehow manages to top the original! This game possessed me until I unlocked everything. (165)

Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed: Amazing conclusion to the entire Xenoblade saga. A perfectly condensed Xeno experience full of nostalgia for long-term fans. (30)

Beholgar: Fun but frustratingly buggy. I ended up watching it completed on Bard’s stream. (5)

Diablo 3: A contender for the greatest game ever made. I’d already played for hundreds of hours over the last eight years but the cravings had returned… (55)

Labyrinth of Zangetsu: Very loyal to retro dungeon crawler design including punishing difficulty. Visual style is the main appeal but wears thin quickly. While it was thin on content and a bit grindy toward the end, I still enjoyed beating it. (25)

Vampire Survivors: Insanely addictive but very repetitive. I had a great time unlocking everything and moved on. (40)

Black Tiger: A 1980s arcade favourite of mine. I downloaded this one for cheap and had a great time beating it for the first time in years.

Exed Exes: Another nostalgic favourite. I remember have strong memories of playing this one in fish’n’chip shops. It would make a good score competition game.

Progear: I’m not a fan of the graphics, or of the fact it’s a bullet hell without an avoidance/bullet eating system. Also the perspective is weird and the point bonuses should move left not down! Not one of my favourite Cave games.

Giga Wing: Amazing bullet hell shooter with a great risk/reward system. Scores in the trillions are silly though!

Varth: Fun but pedestrian shooter with an unusual shield multiple system that adds very little to the game. A relic of an era before bullet hell.

19XX: The War Against Destiny: Very fun shooter with fluid motion and lots of popcorn enemies. Weapons could have more variety. I think the scoring system has practice potential.

1944: The Loop Master: Amazing graphics but very difficult even on the easy setting. I prefer extra lives to a power-based system, and with only one life this one feels particularly punishing.

Wargroove: An Advance Wars wannabe that didn’t grab me. Feels like a fan game.

Alwa’s Awakening & Alwa’s Legacy: Retro-style Metroidvanias that are both too slow and clunky. Probably ok if you give them time, but neither grabbed me.

Final Fantasy (Pixel Remaster): Yes I beat this twice in 2023! This is a great remake for modern consoles, and I’m sure I’ll return to it again one day. (12)

Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society: This wizardry-like started strong with a good, solid first section (40 hrs) but then restarts with a half-finished procedural grind (hundreds of dungeon levels?!) that sucked the life out of it. Should have been half what it is. (67)

Heroes of Hammerwatch: Content rich twin stick RPG roguelike. I played for hours and hours and felt like I’d only dipped my toe in! I beat the game with one of ten characters and barely explored the dlc. I’ll return to this one… (60)

Kotodama: The 7 Mysteries of Fujisawa: Very mundane visual novel with boring characters and boring-after-one-go match 3 puzzles. I gave up quickly.

Harvestella: Much better than expected action RPG combined with a fun farm simulator. Very deep with fun boss fights. A genuine surprise that occupied me five times longer than I expected! (95)

Fire Emblem Engage: Ironically not as ‘engaging’ as previous games in the series. Too many systems that don’t offer enough to make their inclusion worthwhile. The story feels dialed-in, but the female characters are exceptionally cute. A rare FE title that I just couldn’t get into. (22)

Boulder Dash 30th Anniverary & Boulder Dash Deluxe: A bit of fun nostalgic distraction, but got frustratingly difficult quickly. Loads of content!

Gal Guardians: Acts like a metroidvania but it’s more like an old school castlevania clone. And ultimately, a not very good one with boring enemies and unsatisfying controls. A failed attempt that I gave up on early.

Final Fantasy II (Pixel Remaster): Initially off-putting due to the weird leveling system but the boost mode of the remakes made it bearable and ultimately the game was fun (if flawed). (13)

Trinity Trigger: An action RPG that starts well but rapidly becomes a simplistic by-the-numbers game that has less ambition that many mobile games. The bosses are damage sponges to an almost absurd degree. (15)

Super Mario Bros. Wonder: Every level is unique and fun to play, and it’s hard to imagine this isn’t the peak of 2D Mario games. The ‘secret’ levels can be fiendishly difficult but are so satisfying to beat! I finished this one quicker than expected, and was surprised to find that many thought it may be too difficult! (14)

Paranormasight: Fun visual novel about people using curses to kill each other in 1980s Tokyo. It’s got a great style and the story keeps Kristin and I guessing as we play it together (we haven’t beaten it yet). Recommended! (10+?)

Final Fantasy III (Pixel Remaster): A wonderful evolution of the series, with a fun job system and a nicely paced quest. (20)

Baten Kaitos HD Remaster: Didn’t entrance me like the originals did two decades ago. I may give this a second chance one day.

Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher: I was looking forward to this one! I bought it in Japan but sadly – despite what I read online – it didn’t have any English so I couldn’t play it 🙁

Needy Girl Overdose: Misogynistic game where you play the boyfriend of a female streamer. Basically a text adventure with a slight graphical overcoat. Vaguely interesting but many abrupt endings and it has the stink of unprofessionalism. Some will find this offensive.

Metallic Child: Short and forgettable action roguelite not even 1% as good as Hades. Tightly designed though, and notably of Korean origin. (8)

Blacksmith of the Sand Kingdom: A very fun JPRG with extensive crafting. Easy to get into but complicated at the high end. Just the right length as well. A genuine surprise! (27)

Cat Quest 2 : Entertaining RPG-lite that was a bit too easy. Very similar to the first one, but no less fun. (10)

Silent Hope: Diablo-like with multiple classes but repetitive dungeons. And yet it grabbed me hard and didn’t let go until I’d beaten it on all three difficulty levels. An unexpected joy. (48)

Monster Train First Class: Too addictive. Similar but inferior to Slay The Spire, with not as many long term goals. I unlocked everything and moved on lest it grabbed me too hard. (20)

The Messenger: Starts off as an 8-bit style platformer but becomes a 16-but style Metroidvania after a couple of hours play. A well made game with a good sense of humor but I found it a little boring and gave up. (6)

Batsugan: Insanely difficult shooter even on easiest setting. Enemy shots move almost too fast to react to. It feels like it should have a bullet-eating mechanic (but doesn’t). Ideal for the arcade; not so great at home.

Steamworld Quest: A graphically and mechanically impressive RPG that lost me quickly due to its boring story and characters. Also I feel the card mechanic (to the combat) didn’t live up to its potential.

Afterimage: A fun Metroidvania with beautiful graphics and a nice challenge level. (12)

Puzzle & Dragons (iOS): 2023 was the year I surpassed 10 years of consecutive logins (3843 days as of this post) and I still play it every day. I can’t even guess how many hours I sunk into this one in 2023, but I’m positive this is and will ever remain the game I play most in my entire life!

So there you go, a record of considerably over 1000 hours of gameplay this past year alone. I guess I’m still as much the gamer as I ever was 🙂

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