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Con Swag

Tuesday, October 20th, 2015

We bought a bunch of stuff at the con. Here’s a selection:

That’s issue 1 of a magazine that ran for only 3 issues back in 1967. It’s basically a girls romance comic with some ‘true love advice’ and articles about dreamy male celebrities of the era. Some guy was selling scads of all three issues of this, probably found in an abandoned warehouse.

KLS bought this disapproving cat plush. I think it’s disapproval is due to it being the smallest and cheapest plush we bought at the con 🙂

I got these 4 old D&D Modules for a song. To my surprise, one of them is a single-player version that uses invisible ink to hide the events! Only two squares in the entire book have been inked in. I wonder if the remaining ink still works?

Autographed Chris Achilleos art, now framed and on my wall. The guy I bought this from (I also got an Achilleos poster) knows the artist, and was telling me how friendly and gracious he is. He said he had another print somewhere in his voluminous stand, and I was hopeful for some FF or DW art, but alas he couldn’t find it 🙁

More art, this time a lenticular Miku poster. See how her blue matches the colour of my study wall! We bought a lot of art at the con, from posters to prints to autographed works. Much of it is already framed and up on our walls (or KLS’s office wall).

Speaking of Miku, here’s the con-exclusive Nendroid they were selling at the Good Smile booth. It’s super cute, and somehow ended up leaving the con with me 😉

KLS purchased this tiny ‘sea bunny’ resin figure direct from the artist. It is based on the recently discovered ‘sea bunny’ species of nudibranch slug, which looks like this:

So cute! We stumbled upon this fortuitously, since the artist was only there for an hour and only selling 25 of them. I guess he’s somewhat famous since the person in front of us was very excited and had some of his other stuff for him to autograph. He was friendly and seemed genuinely happy people were buying his stuff.

Last but not least, could this be the find of the show:

All 36 packs, unopened! A world of spice and worms and Gom Jabbers and Kwisatz Haderachs just waiting to be uncovered! Plus there are stickers too. Even though they are already 31 years old I’ll let them age a bit before eagerly ripping into all of them…

…unless you want a pack for your very own self? If so, let me know in the comments.

Posted in Art, Gamebooks, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Toys, Trading Cards | 2 Comments »

NYCC 2015 Day 2

Friday, October 9th, 2015

Three shots taken from our hotel room which costs an arm and a leg and boasts a ‘deluxe city view’. The view earlier this evening during a heavy rainstorm was quite stunning.

I’ll get the obligatory ‘insane lines’ comment out of the first. Yes the lines are insane and yes it can be frustrating but as old hands we knew what we were in for and endure it calmly like saints… but Christ there’s a lot of people here!

That’s KLS getting her lips glittered. From the hundreds of exhibitors you can buy almost anything: it’s not all comics and toys. There’s actually a surprising amount of vendors selling clothing (mostly costumes), wigs, contact lenses and cosmetics. KLS bought some eyeliner from this booth last year, loved it, and was happy to find they were back!

I particularly like the guys selling the ‘vintage’ collectibles because you never know what you’ll find. Take the above shot: a view master reel next to nazi memorabilia and a vintage Star Wars toy. Wonderful! Occasionally these sorts of vendors have some treasures like this:

Which pales next to some of the ‘serious collector’ comics on offer, such as this:

There are also a dozen or so original art dealers, from which you can buy the original art created for comics over the years. It’s a bit daunting browsing their wares though, when tiny pieces of art run into the thousands!

No real comment on the above, other than its about 60 cm tall!

That’s the sort of thing I would have gone berserk for as a kid. Not only does the set contain 12 gargoyles and 6 titans, but it’s also got 12 dragonriders and a mind-boggling 40 demons!! The fun I would have had 😉

I wonder if this prototype shown at the Kotobukiya booth is a Force Awakens spoiler?

The last silly item photo of the days goes to these perler bead faces of Stephen Colbert. Each (that’s 2 different items) costs $400 and is (much) smaller and in fewer colours than the one I made of Bernard earlier this year…

On to cosplay! As usual it’s everywhere, and sometimes you feel like you’re in the minority not being in costume. The eye-catcher at the show so far is this massive Hulkbuster that towers over everyone and is build around a sort of power suit the guy inside is wearing:

You can see how popular it is! Here’s a shot of him putting the whole thing on:

Impressive as it is (and it really is), I tend to prefer quirky stuff like this:

Or creative (and pretty!) stuff like this:

I don’t even know who she is cosplaying 🙂

We’ve also spent hours walking ‘Artists Alley’, where hundreds of artists display and sell prints of their work to the public. Much of this is comic-related, but there’s also a bunch of other genres and themes and a good amount has made its way into our bags destined for our walls at home.

Tomorrow is the big day, and the only day with panels we are interested in (we missed the Rebels panel, which was held too soon after opening yesterday). Assuming we beat the lines and get wristbands hours ahead of time, we may even be able to sit in on panels with (omg) celebrities! I’ll swoon with excitement! Wish me luck 😉

Posted in Art, Books & Comics, Crafts, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Toys | 1 Comment »

Things We Saw At The Computerspielemuseum

Tuesday, August 25th, 2015

A couple of weeks ago (it’s been that long?!) K, B and I visited a museum in Berlin dedicated to Computer Games. It was small, but it was very good, and perhaps even the best of the few I’ve visited over the years. Here’s a random selection of things we saw in the museum…

In the earliest part of the museum they had the landmarks of pre-computer gaming, such as (very) 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons:

And the first gamebook every written, Sugarcane Island (written 1969, published 1976):

They had holy grails of the Golden Age:

Crazy game art from the 1980s:

A small but good condition arcade:

A well-done series of rooms decorated to resemble certain ages of gaming. Here’s Bernard in the 1980’s attic room (presumably a typical German household attic from that era):

They also had Germany’s own homegrown console from the early 1980s. Only about 40 games were ever released:

You could design your own sprites:

You could post with Lara Croft(s):

Or you could look ridiculous playing Atari Ms Pac-Man using a titanic joystick:

And you could even risk your life playing the Painstation:

This is a massive two-player Pong game where the players are penalized for mistake in the form of heat, electric shocks or whips to the hands (see details here). We watched two people play it and as the game progressed they certainly seemed to be feeling the pain. I would have played it, but my compatriots were hesitant 🙂

As I said, a small museum but a goodie. If it wasn’t hot and we weren’t already overcome by ruination, I would have liked to have spent hours there reading all the information. Recommended if you’re in Berlin.

Posted in Art, Games, Tech, Trip | Comments Closed

Probably Of Interest Only To The Bear

Saturday, July 18th, 2015

I haven’t made a World of Warcraft post in ages since I stopped played about 2 years ago (Sep 10, 2013 to be precise). Blizzard have been relentless in trying to get me to return, offering me free game time several times over the years. Mostly I ignore the offers, but yesterday I redeemed a free week and logged on to see what has changed.

Here’s what I saw upon login:

Of course there has been a new expansion added as well. I found it interesting they don’t mention that.

A couple of UI buttons were highlit with big glowing help arrows. One was the ‘collections’ button, that contains the pet, mount, toy and heirloom collections. Here’s a shot of the toy collection:

And here are the heirlooms:

There are so many mounts in the game now (>400 I think!) it’s just a bit crazy. The new ones added in the expansion are mostly boring reskinned wolves and pigs, but this guy caught my eye:

Look at the cost! Many of the new mounts seem excessively pricey. I guess Bliz wants to reduce player wealth.

Speaking of wealth, the other UI button they were directing me to was the in-game shop, where you can buy mounts and pets…

Or other things like game-time tokens ($20 each) that can be sold on the AH (~24k gold apiece) or even a $60 – sixty dollars! – level boost:

I wonder if they only priced it that high to make the additional cost of the expansion (which includes one boost) seem like a deal?

Anyway I had to see the new character models, which were billed as a big draw. For comparison, here’s a shot of Momomo (my main character) from back the days of the old models:

And here she was, all ready for some styling, immediately upon logging in today:

It’s not a massive difference is it? The short hair and weird face were not to my liking though, so I tried a few looks…

Before settling on this:

The fancy new character models are underwhelming. For starters the characters still look quite dated due to the limitations of the armor. And secondly the vast majority of characters have their faces covered by big bulky helmets (or shoulders) so you never see the new faces anyway. Not a selling point in my opinion.

Since I don’t have the expansion – and don’t intend to buy it now – playing the game stuck at level 90 is a bit like getting a free ticket to the movies but having to leave after the trailers. There wasn’t really anything to do that wasn’t available back when I quit, so I got bored very quickly.

I did have one quest I was always meaning to solve, so I went and beat up this dude:

They have added some sort of buff when it comes to fighting lower-level monsters (including raid bosses), which made Black Temple a faceroll. Which is good, since I’ve forgotten how to play and the class has changed so much I couldn’t really be bothered to relearn 🙂

Oh, and the game is dead. There wasn’t many people on at all (including in the capitals) and the guild seems to only have a dozen or so people that play:

So my free week didn’t keep my interest more than 24 hours. I parked Momo on her pretty sparkling horse (obtained from playing Hearthstone of all things) and said goodbye once again:

I’m sure one day I’ll buy the new expansion(s?) and return again. Just not today!

Posted in Games, Otaku, Time | 2 Comments »

Intellitourney 2015

Monday, July 13th, 2015

It was time once again for another TV game system tournament. The place: KLS’s parents house. The time: July 4 weekend. The entrants: KLS, Jim and myself.

Three experienced combatants would this time set sail into unfamiliar waters: Intellivision!

The (emulated) Intellivision system contains about 60 games and includes controllers modeled after the original as well as the plastic overlays. It’s nicely designed, and much better than the Atari one with its poorly working IR wireless controllers.

The usual rules applied: only play single player games with scores, no practicing and each games winner goes first on the next game (a disadvantage).

The graphics are stylish, with effective use of color and quite a bit more animation than I thought the system would have. Of course the games themselves have aged very poorly, and are probably best played these days in a tournament such as this.

We put our hearts and souls into the struggle, and it took us about 4.5 hours to play every game that fulfilled the requirements!

It was a hard fought battle, full of triumphant highs and terrible lows, craven bluster and stoic bravado, of cheers and of jeers and even a few tears. But by the end none of us doubted who had rightfully earned the title of ‘Ultimate TV Game King‘.

Here are the results:

The first plot shows the cumulative scores (2 pts for a win, 1 for second, 0 for last) and the second plot shows the score percentage per game.

With my usual humility, I’ll graciously accept your congratulations for my impressive victory 🙂

This last photo shows screenshots of the best game in the collection: a strange Pac-Man/RPG hybrid called Thunder Castle. It had three levels, of which we only saw two, and was perhaps the only game in the system I’d be interested in playing more…

…but that’s going to have to wait, since I’ve also acquired the Colecovision TV game system, and the early stages of Colecotourney 2015 have even begun!

However it will take months for the next ‘Ultimate TV Game King’ to be crowned. Stay tuned 😉

Posted in Family, Games | 1 Comment »

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