Category: Games

Mushi Jingi

May 11, 2026

Daiso is a Japanese ‘dollar store’, but don’t let that categorization fool you: it’s much, much better than USA equivalents. This is because Daiso mostly sells its own high quality products, and stocks an incredible variety of items in almost every category. Every trip to Japan includes a stop at a Daiso, and in the past we’ve bought things from laundry bags to packing tape to candy for extremely low prices.

This is the first booster pack for a game called Mushi Jingi. This is Daiso’s first trading card game and was first released in 2022. Each pack contains five cards and costs a mere ¥100 (about $0.64)!

This is an insect themed game (according to Google, the name variously translates into ‘Insect Honor’ or ‘Sacred Insects’) and my cards came in three rarities (Normal, Rare and Super Rare). I assume every pack contains at least a foil SR card, but the backs of each pack show there’s an even rare type (LR) which I assume is even flashier.

Each card has a power, type, ability and text at the bottom. The art is consistent amongst all the cards I’ve seen and is detailed but simple depictions of insects. I’ll translate a couple of cards further down in this post.

The cards are not flimsy and feel like higher-price games but the cardback is a bit dull. I’ll give it props for summarizing the damage rules, but I believe it could have been prettier.

As a game aimed at children, gameplay is apparently fast and easy, and the low price makes building a deck very inexpensive. This seems like it would be a fun game to buy a box of and test drive!

From what I read the game has been a success, and to date there have been seven total expansions. On our recent trip I bought one pack from each of the first six, and the seventh has been released since. The packs depict characters but none of the cards I opened feature any of them so I wonder if they’re used in an associated manga or anime?

Here’s one of the action cards translated, and if you read carefully you’ll see that ‘Tengyu’s Broxade Jaw’ only powers up beetles of the Cerambycidae family. This is the sort of feature I couldn’t imagine would ever make its way onto an English-language TCG, and it is because this game aims to be educational as well 🙂

Here’s one of the SR cards translated, although Google kept Kiniro and didn’t translated it to ‘gold’. This guy is from Papua New Guinea, widely known as my homeland, which means this beetle – the Papuan Golden Stag – is from my clan!

It’s a beautiful beast isn’t it? And if it weren’t for Mushi Jingi I probably would not have learned of its existence, much less that it uses its jaws to cut meat and suck out juice!

As I said I think it would be fun to buy a few boxes of this game, build decks, and give it a spin. It’s so inexpensive that I’m sure parents in Japan have been buying lots of packs for their kids, and I understand why it’s lasted four years already.

My Collection: 3DS

May 5, 2026

In February 2011, Nintendo released the followup to their DS console. Called the 3DS, it featured the gimmick of 3D play without glasses. This actually worked, and once again Nintendo had released an unexpected and unusual handheld console.

At the time of release, the DS was still going strong and I had a big backlog of games to play. While the 3DS was better in almost every way, in one aspect it was a step back: Nintendo chose to ‘region lock’ the handheld, which meant you could only play games purchased in the country you bought the system. For someone like me, who had for years bought GBA and DS games while visiting Japan, this was irritating, and it was a while before I purchased one.

My first unit was the Zelda one shown in the top right of the above photo. The other photos show the other four units I would eventually buy: the ‘new’ 3DS, the 3DS XL and (in the center) the ‘2DS XL’. The different versions over the years added new controls, increased the screen size, added processor power, improved the 3D effect and – ultimately – removed the 3D effect. This last iteration – the ‘New 2DS XL’ – is in my opinion the best handheld ever made.

As you can see the system includes analogue controls, a touchscreen and more buttons than any previous handheld. It has a dedicated OS based around online connectivity, and a 3DS online store made this the first handheld you could theoretically build a digital-only library on. The 3D effect varied between games, but even when well done it was tiring to use and I (and I suspect most players) usually turned it off.

Cartridges were essentially the same as for the DS, although the technology was a bit different inside. One change was the system no longer played GBA cartridges, but it was fully compatible with DS games although the increased screen resolution meant they had to be letterboxed.

Aside from Switch, the 3DS is the only console on which I haven’t sold my collection, which runs to 104 games today. This is somewhat small compared to what I had for everything else, and the region lock is a cause of this. But the quality of 3DS games was extremely high, especially for the sorts of games I enjoy, and I still have very fond memories of the system.

The previous photo was all my normal boxed games, and the above shows a selection of my ‘collectors’ versions. These became increasingly common on the system, and I have dozens of them.

Most of these were packaged with a soundtrack or tiny artbook or some other tchotchke, and very rarely cost more than the $30 or so a 3DS game cost in those days. Most of these have appreciated now, but I don’t plan on ever selling mine.

The Etrian Odyssey series continued onto the 3DS with remakes and new takes and I purchased, played – and loved – them all. I have since bought the remakes of the first trilogy for Switch (all of which were good), but one day I plan on replaying some of these later games as well.

Monster Rancher had several great installments on the 3DS, and Generations in particular was wonderful and I played it for over 700 hours! I’d probably rank it as the second best ever MH game.

The 3DS had a version of Puzzle & Dragons, although localization decisions made it much difficult than it should have been (I still haven’t ever beaten the hard mode). Fantasy Life is an incredibly good action RPG that has the distinction of being the first Nintendo handheld game with paid DLC (which I purchased). And Xenoblade Chronicles 3D – which is of course wonderful – is the only game released that required a ‘New 3DS’ to play.

Here’s two sealed games I found in my collection. Both of them I owned and played on other systems, so I doubt these will ever be opened. I checked, and neither of them are especially valuable today.

This one is pricey, and at ~$300 is easily the most valuable 3DS game in my collection. This was a Nintendo series that didn’t succeed in the USA, and not only did they print extremely small quantities of this sequel, but they were very poorly distributed. I found it in a budget bin a year or two after release, and snapped it up for about $10.

One unfortunate aspect of the console was that some cartridges no longer work due to manufacturing errors. I own two of these and when I put them in the console today they are just dead. Back in the day Nintendo offered replacements but I had beaten the games and put them away so mine hadn’t failed yet. These days they cartridges are basically junk, and some think this fate may eventually come to many other 3DS games as well. I hope not.

Aside from a Japanese game I bought last year (and can never play), my last 3DS game purchased was a Pokemon game in mid 2019. By then sales had dwindled, and within a year many stores had stopped carrying the console. The rumoured replacement eventually became the Switch, and the days of a small dedicated handheld – which began with the Game Boy 30 years prior – ended with the 3DS. It remains one of my favourite consoles amongst all those I’ve owned.

Video Game Scratchies

March 8, 2026

I’ve got a lot of strange collections, and here’s one I don’t think I’ve shared before: video game themed scratch off tickets!

Both of the above are from 2017. To the best of my knowledge I’ve never been to Michigan so I imagine I purchased that in an airport. I think both are nicely designed and represent the game well.

This one (from 2018) surprised me when I found it in my collection, since I would have said NY has never had one of these ‘maze’ scratch off games. I like these sorts of cards and I think they themed this one well.

Isn’t it disappointing how today scratch-off tickets have become so mindless? The reason is that the various issuers found players had difficulty with more complex games and as a result everything is simplified now.

From 2014, the above is probably the highlight of my collection! This one is Australian and has two games on it oriented so it can be simultaneously played by two people! I wonder if I played this one with Bernard or Adam back in the day?

There’s been a lot of Pac-Man tickets over the years, and the above are from NY (2018), Australia (Unknown date, and two from 2025). Bernard sent me the two on the right for my birthday and I don’t think he believed me when I said I had a collection of others. Now he knows 🙂

Incidentally you’ll note how the NY and first Australian tickets are very similar in design. I speculate this is because there’s a few large lottery companies worldwide that make tickets for different countries and they may have been designed by the same firm.

And lastly, this Ms. Pac Man from Washington (State) that was also released in 2018. This one is a mystery since I’ve never been to Washington and don’t even remember flying through the airport! As you see it’s a clone of the first Australian Pac Man ticket which supports my theory they were all designed by the same group.

A quick search online reveals many more Pac Man and Frogger tickets, as well as a Galaga (!) one released by Texas some years ago. Tetris and Ms Pac Man seem much rarer though, and I had no success looking for any game-themed tickets outside of the USA or Australia.

Have you seen any others?

Robot Claw