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At Last! The Annual List Of What My Brother Will Buy Me For Christmas!

Thursday, October 30th, 2014

The other week I got this text from a certain brother-of-mine:

I was astounded. In previous years I had produced such lists, but little did I know that they had worked their way into the tapestry of my brothers christmas-shopping life (so to speak).

He went on to say “money is no object“ and “the more obscure and difficult to find, the better“. Sadly I forgot to screenshot those bits.

So Bernard, as requested…

Books Category

The ZX Spectrum Book (Andrew Rollins)

A few years back Bernard got me ‘The Commodore 64 Book‘ which was just fab. I quickly snapped up the followup (‘The 8-bit Book‘) but have been tragically unable to acquire the first book from this small publisher. This is perhaps not surprising, since it was published over five years ago in small quantities and is long out of print. I don’t know exactly where he’s going to find it, but when I open this beauty on Christmas day I’ll be a happy reader indeed!

The World Of The Dark Crystal (Brian Froud)

Given there is now a sequel to the film coming, I believe Christmas 2014 would be the perfect time for my brother to put on his sleuth’s hat and solve an outstanding mystery. You see I don’t just want any copy of this book, I want my copy. Truth is, as a youngling sprout, I purchased myself a copy of this lovely tome from Angus & Robertson Charlestown Square. This would have been back in ’82, when the film came out. It was a mildly expensive book, and I had to utilize lay-by to get it! And oh how I loved it! It was one of my most treasured possessions, ‘my precious’ if you will. And then some soulless inhuman thief nicked it :<

As I hinted, the mystery of who stole my book is as yet unsolved. The only lead I’ve had these 32 long years is this photo taken by a security camera:

I’m hoping, in the spirit of Christmas, Bernard may finally discover the identity of the thief and return to me my beloved tome…

Trial Of Champions (Ian Livingstone)

Of course I own this book. Multiple copies in fact. But I don’t own the version shown, which is the US imprint. It was the last FF book released in the US during the initial series, and I have all the others. But not this one. And I have looked, oh how have I looked! The problem is sellers very, very rarely (ie. never) bother to specify the imprint when they sell this book online. And given there was probably 80 quadrillion copies of the UK version printed to every US copy, taking a chance is a fool’s errand. I consider myself one of the world’s foremost ‘online searchers for and buyers of’ gamebooks, and boast a bookshelf of more than four hundred. And yet I’ve never seen this one. I look forward to that changing this Christmas day.

DVD Section

It Couldn’t Happen Here (1988)

Otherwise known as ‘The Pet Shop Boys film’. I saw this a few years after it came out, probably at the Enmore theatre, probably with a lass named Caraid who I forget everything about except her unusual name. I think she looked like Karen Gillan though, and her mum gave me a beer once within 30 seconds of visiting her house. Weird. Anyway I want to see this film again, which means I want it on DVD. This is a tall order, since it’s never been released on DVD. Which limits my options to two: VHS or Laserdisc. The first option is of course absurd, but the second is a possibility since I own a working LD player. Maybe. So that’s the hard part out of the way, now all I need is the disc, in NTSC format of course. I’ve made your work easy Bernard 🙂

Adam Adamant Lives! (1966)

I’ve never seen this show since it never screen outside of England and I’m not an Englishman. Firstly, the BBC trashed a bunch of episodes so it doesn’t even exist in it’s entirety. Secondly, it’s never been released on anything outside of England. And lastly the DVD set (containing the 17 existing episodes) is long out of print. All these considerations aside, given that this show inspired Doctor Who and The Avengers (and some of Kim Newman’s characters) I obviously need to see it. And I shall, when Bernard gives me the Region 2 box set loaded with extras for Christmas.

Toy Section

Dark Horn ‘Harry Special’ (HM Zoid Kit)

There’s a lot of beautiful things in this world, and then there’s the limited ‘Harry Special’ variant HM Zoid Dark Horn kit. I mean look at that! Could there even exist a better looking model kit? Of course not, and I therefore must own it. Bernard will undoubtedly agree, and I’m just going to be ebullient when he gives it to me for Christm–

Oh to hell with it! This guy’s so pretty I just can’t goddamn wait until Christmas! Hang on a second, while I go buy it…

Ok, taken care of. It’s now mine, all mine. And in case you don’t believe me, let Emi prove it to you:

OMG the box is bigger than Emi! Sorry Bernard. Guess I ruined that as a potential gift 😉

L.E.D. Mirage V3: Inferno Napalm (FSS 1:100 kit)

If I ever met anyone that claimed that any other kit was better looking than this, I’d start by punching them, and I’d end by never being their friend. We all know that Five Star Stories mech’s are stupidly pretty and the jewel-in-the-crown of FSS model kits is unquestionably this one. Sure it costs more than almost every piece of furniture in my house, is supposedly extremely difficult to assemble and when you do takes hundreds of hours, but gosh it’s pretty. Even prettier, I suspect, than Caraid, the girl I saw a movie with 25 years ago and have forgotten about. Oh and Bernard, when you budget for this guy, be sure to add on another $50 or so for the sizeable cost of shipping the collossal box all the way across the USA 😉

Game Section

The Sacred Armor of Antiriad (C64, 1986)

I’m a canny beast. Much like Steven Moffat (aka. the favourite scribe of my illustrious friend Adam ‘The Bold’ W), I like winding secrets into the story of my life. I bet none of you knew back when I penned this that I was in fact laying the groundwork for this very post? That blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to this game was none other than a deliberate mention to plant the thought into my brother’s mind that “Hey, that’d be a good gift to get him for Christmas!” This game was never that great, but it has a lot of nostalgia factor, and I’d like to give it a whirl again one day. Now before you say it, I’ll quote my prestigious friend Florence ‘The Bear’ L: “Emulation, shmemulation!” She knows, as I do, that emulation is for fakers, and I must play the original C64 version. This introduces a… wrinkle into the equation though, for even if my bellowing brother Bernard ‘The Brave’ S gets me this game he’s going to have to get me something to play it on. It’s good thing therefore that this list also contains…

Commodore SX-64 (1984)

Let’s for a moment consider that there even exists a world in which my brother find a US version of one of these portable C64’s in working order and for sale. That alone would be surprising, given the fact they are 30 years old and contain circuitry that has almost certainly worn out after so long (not to mention the screens are infamous for burn-in). But if that happens, we must also consider the chance he would somehow manage to acquire it and not keep it for himself. I would imagine that chance to be miniscule, especially since in good working order this would cost more than that LED Mirage kit mentioned above. These reasons are why this would (no doubt) be a truly heartfelt and appreciated gift. Doubly so when he sends me hundreds of games with it 🙂

Gold Cliff (1988)

Last year I asked for the Zelda Game & Watch, but Santa ignored me. This year I’ll scale down my desire slightly to the even rarer penultimate dual-screen release: Gold Cliff. I saw one of these boxed, in Japan, for almost a thousand dollars. Naturally I’d want a boxed version, so it’s a good thing my brother made that quip about money not being a problem isn’t it? 😉

Miscellaneous Section

Now I’m no fool. I fully realize some of the above are hard to find. And therefore I’ll finish with a brief list of other items that would be wonderful to find under the tree. This list may not contain as much detail as the above, but I can’t do all the work for you now can I?

– t-shirts (large size, preferably with Ultraman on them)
– 4711 soap
– Any other FSS model kit
– A Stonehenge papercraft model kit
– “How to Master The Video Games” (sadly stolen in the same heist that nabbed the Dark Crystal book…)
– Any game & watch that isn’t ‘Turtle Bridge’, ‘Donkey Kong Jr’ or ‘Ball’
– trading cards, preferably sealed packs (of anything non-sport)
– Anything on old lists I don’t have yet (esp. the John Pertwee album of bawdy songs!)

And there we go! Happy hunting 🙂

Posted in Blog, Books & Comics, Family, Gamebooks, Games, Miscellaneous, Movies, MTG, Otaku, Tech, The Unknown, Time, Toys, TV | 2 Comments »

???? Update

Thursday, October 16th, 2014

Today was a special day. How special? Well today marked my 500th consecutive PazuDora login:

Five hundred days in an iPhone game?!? That’s crazy. Even crazier is it keeps growing and getting better so who knows when it all will end?

That’s my primary leader. I run a ‘row-enhance physical burst team’ that can (and has) beaten just about ever dungeon in the game.

I’m working on leveling this guy up since ‘I have the best subs’ to run a ‘GZL TP burst team’ that may be even more powerful than blue Sonia. For the remaining dungeons, such as those with orb limits or pre-emptives or type restrictions, I’ve also got a ‘Kirin combo team’ and a ‘Lucifer/gravity tank team’. Yes I’m speaking lingo here…

In 500 days I’ve spent $40 on the game, in two payments of $20. I actually feel bad about not spending more, but Gung-ho are so generously awarding ‘magic stones’ (the premium currency) that I literally never run out! Soon I’ll toss them some more cash for my enjoyment.

As you may be able to tell Puzzle & Dragons is a rich and complex game, and I’m still enjoying it a lot. However I don’t recommend it since it is a bit too difficult and hardcore, especially at the end game. But I love that.

I’ll update again in 2016 at 1000 days played 😉

Posted in Art, Games, Otaku, Time | Comments Closed

The RPG Critic (Shining Forth history part 2)

Thursday, September 25th, 2014

It was more than three years ago that I presented part one of the history of my game fanzine. Read it here if you missed it. At the time I suggested a followup article would be forthcoming, and here it is!

To summarize (and to bridge the gap a bit): I printed a fanzine for about two years, and had no trouble selling every copy. But it was hard work, time consuming, and in 1996 I shifted my focus to a webpage. The website was quite popular, but it lacked a forum (which were somewhat rare in those days) and I was becoming swamped with emails from my readers (I used to run a letters page).

During the years I had worked on the ‘zine I had made a couple of contacts in the industry (at Atlus, FCI and Sega particularly) but none better than Victor Ireland, the president and owner of the company Working Designs. In late 1998, wanting to drive readers to his company website, he suggested buying all my content (my reviews, basically) and hiring me to continue reviewing games for his site.

At first I was resistant since I feared I’d lose editorial control, but he assured me I wouldn’t (a promise he never broke) and given the amount of work the website had become I eventually agreed. In early 1999 the Working Designs website was spruced up, and the ‘RPG Critic’ section added. That was me 🙂

Vic had the above commissioned in 2003, and it was intended for a website revamp (he had similar pictures made of all his staff). I had red hair in those days! You’ll note the review I’m writing starts with the line “This game sucks…” because by then – some four years after I had started – I had become somewhat infamous on the site for my occasionally scathing reviews…

But I jump ahead! Let’s go back a few years. When the RPG Critic launched all my old fanzine reviews immediately went live, as well as a dozen or so I had written but withheld from my website. There was some press in magazines about this, which was notable because US-based game magazines in those days mostly ignored the RPG genre. Online review sites were almost nonexistent in those days and Working Designs almost overnight became one of the web’s foremost sites hosting reviews of console RPGs.

My arrangement with Vic was simple: I would be reimbursed the cost of any game I reviewed for his site. This ended up essentially meaning I could get the sorts of games I liked for free, but very quickly I developed a near-obsession with reviewing anything that was an RPG and my game collection ballooned. Vic was occasionally slow with payment, but it always came eventually, and in addition I received a good amount of freebies from his company. In time I started testing games for them as well (not bug testing, more like system testing). The pinnacle of this was probably the extensive suggestions I gave him about endgame content in the Arc The Lad collection which led to my name in the credits 🙂

My reviews were out of 11, and as I mentioned Vic very rarely had any sort of comment on them. I’d write them, send them to him, and they’d be posted without edits. The only request he had was that I detail why I didn’t like games I gave bad reviews to, which was probably a reference to my sometimes too-short dismissals of bad games in the fanzine. I reviewed games from his company as well, and he never once suggested I change my scores (which was once as low as a 3). He was good to his word that the content of the reviews was 100% up to me.

That’s a shot of the site (obtained via the Wayback Machine) from 2003. By then it had become quite popular, and you can see Vic ran contests, posted fanart and had a very busy forum as well. The forum was particularly interesting, since everyone has an opinion, and often those opinions included critiques of my reviews. I recall Vic loved this, because it meant readers! During the five years I wrote for the site I very rarely posted to the forums except to answer direct questions, and I was amused to see that a sort of ‘supporter base’ had built for me, and whenever anyone would pop in to criticize one of my reviews (or me in general) they’d all chime in on my behalf!

Even my detractors though were impressed by the sheer content of my work, since by the time I ended writing for the site I had personally reviewed over 250 games (which meant I had played them all) and had become a sort of walking encyclopedia/expert on localized console RPGs. I recall most of the forum posts I ever made were to give information about particular rare or unknown games that people had questions about.

Here’s the first 11 I ever gave, to a game I still consider one of the greatest ever made:

And yes, I still own all those games…

One unusual issue that arose during my years writing reviews was people plagiarizing my work. I was usually informed about this via a forum post, and i can recall in particular the website rpgamer.com (which still exists today) ‘lifting’ the text from a few of my reviews and posting them under a different name. I contacted them and the reviews were taken down, but some time afterwards they went right back up! Even worse, a magazine (published by Viz communications) devoted to anime/manga/games stole one of my reviews as well and printed it essentially verbatim. I was actually a subscriber (!), and wrote them a letter to which I never received a reply…

Working Designs was very successful for many years, but ran into trouble during the transition into the PS3/X360 generation. I ended my association with them in late 2003. While I was still enjoying the work, I knew I had to devote more time to my graduate school work and couldn’t keep playing (essentially) every RPG released. Rather than pick-and-choose games to review, my intention was to pass the mantle onto a new ‘RPG Critic’. As it turns out, none eventuated, and with my departure the reviews simply stopped. The website stopped updating in early 2005 (no new reviews being posted for almost 18 months) and Working Designs themselves went out of business later that year.

By those days – some 6 years after I started writing for the site and 11 years after I printed my first fanzine – the internet had matured and game review sites were (too!) common. The niche that the WD website had once filled didn’t exist any more, and the RPG Critic was needed no longer. I remain proud of the work I did in those days – and the fact I played and beat so many, many games, but not for a second do I still wish I was doing it now 🙂

Posted in Blog, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Time | 2 Comments »

Khans of Tarkir Prerelease Report

Sunday, September 21st, 2014

I went to another Magic prerelease yesterday, for the new set Khans of Tarkir. I don’t think I’ve ever gone into one of these less prepared: I didn’t even know the correct name of the set until 3 days before, when I signed up. I had no idea what cards were in it, or what sort of deck I would play!

Only 24 players turned up, which is the lowest I’ve seen at a prerelease in some time. The veterans (am I one?) explained to me that interest in the set seems low compared to previous blocks, and that there wasn’t a high number of ‘money cards’ available. I didn’t care about any of this; I just liked the smaller number of players translating into a higher win chance. As it turned out the event would be five rounds with no playoff, and prizes would be awarded to the top 8. An approximately 1/3rd chance of winning gave me a bit of hope!

I soon learned KoT was a multicoloured set, with five different clans each of three colours. We were all able to choose a box specific to a single clan, which included 5 boosters, a special pack containing cards of only the colours of the clan and other goodies (a pin, sticker, die etc.). I chose the white/black/green clan called Abzan. My choice was based on a few factors:
1) No one had chosen it when it was my turn
2) I didn’t want to play blue
3) I did want to play white

As it turns out I got a middling bunch of cards, with few rares on-colour. I assembled a 40 card white/black deck that contained only the following two rares:

My first opponent was only 9 years old. He was one of a sizeable crowd of very young players who all seemed to know each other and were factioned by their parents. I’d say about a third of the players in total were about his age. I beat him with ease (2-0), which was unsurprising since his deck was terrible and he (clearly a beginner) was overly protective of his monsters. After the win, I spent the rest of the first round helping him improve his deck and going over a few tips that would hopefully help him do better in the following rounds.

While I was pleased with the win, since my opponent had been almost no challenge I still had no idea if my deck was any good!

I beat my next two opponents 2-0 as well. I was starting to realise my deck, while lacking in ‘bombs’, was focused enough to win more often than lose. In particular, I had 7 removal spells and 7 flyers, and two of them (the rares above) were good enough that if I got them off I almost always won. Despite playing Abzan I had almost zero ‘outlast’ cards (one of the new mechanics of the set) and of course no green. It was a weird deck.

After the third round I was in the top 4! In fact there were only 4 people undefeated at that point and I was matched against one of them in round four. To my amusement he played a deck very similar to mine but better in every way, and beat me handily. Although to be honest he was an extremely skilled player and simply outplayed me, and I feel he may have won even had we swapped decks. Afterwards he told me stories of pro-tours he had played in, showed me some extremely rare cards in his collection (prize cards for winning tournaments mostly) and even this striking alter:

He would end up winning the tournament, and he deserved it!

So after four rounds I was 3-1. In my last round I was pitted against the only other guy at 3-1 and beat him handily. I had played only ten games in the tourney, and won 8 of them. My only defeats were to the overall winner! This put me in third place overall, for which I obtained a prize of six boosters. Hooray! I also won a deck box as a door prize. It was a good haul 🙂

While I enjoyed playing, and was happy for the win, I have to say I can understand the (apparent) lack of enthusiasm for the set as a whole. The cards are complex, interactions are common and this is far from a beginners set. Games tended to be long and involved, and as a player it was often irritating not being able to predict the board even as far away as your opponents turn. I’m not sure I’d want to play in a limited environment with these cards.

Posted in Games, Miscellaneous, MTG | 1 Comment »

(Long Live) The Playstation Vita (Is Dead)

Monday, August 11th, 2014

Earlier this year I purchased one of these:

It’s the Playstation Vita, which is their followup game system to the PSP. It actually came out quite some time ago (December 2011), but I held off buying one simply because there was nothing on it that tickled my fancy. The game that eventually lured me enough was TKX by Jeff Minter:

There’s a lot to like about the Vita. It’s solidly built, has very nice controls (especially the dual sticks), is solid state only (which means no silly discs like the PSP) and has a beautiful screen. And when I say beautiful, I mean beautiful. To save costs Sony has actually downgraded the screen in newer models to an LED, but the first version (and the one I have) includes an OLED screen which is simply the brightest and highest resolution screen on anything I own. Yes it means the battery life is abysmal (maybe 2 hours) and the unit is quite heavy but I’d say the tradeoff is worth it for the great screen.

The problem with the Vita is, well it’s that it’s pretty much a dead system.

What does that mean? It means that here in America retail support for the system has floundered, and interest amongst consumers is at an all-time low. Few games are released for the system and those that are don’t have any sort of wide appeal. Furthermore, there are no games at all scheduled after November this year and Sony themselves have said they will release no games themselves. By this time next year I very much doubt this system will be in stores, if produced at all.

And yet these past few weeks I’ve been having more fun with my Vita than any of my other game systems! These ‘no wide appeal’ games infrequently coming out are mostly niche Japanese RPGs which mean they’re my game of choice and I’ve been snapping them up! Games like…

Demon Gaze, an awesome Wizardry clone featuring a complex game system and fabulous graphics…

Toukiden, the closest game every to capture the magic of Monster Hunter. The screenshot above shows how impressive the graphics of the Vita can be in an AAA game…

Persona 4 Golden which I haven’t played yet (it’s next on my list) but if it’s anywhere near as good as Persona 3 on the PSP will be a gem!

There’s many more, and most of the remaining games are of this genre as well. Even if nothing else is released after November, I’ll still have a library that will take me a year or more to finish (assuming I ever stop playing Toukiden). For a dead system, that’s not so bad!

So what killed the Vita? It was an also-ran outside of Japan, where it seemed to immediately inherit the niche market from the PSP. Western exclusives were nonexistent and ports from PS3 games (such as Borderlands 2) were flawed. Obviously competition from the 3DS (especially Capcom’s choice to move Monster Hunter to 3DS) and tablets/phones hurt as well. But ultimately the blame can be laid squarely at the feet of Sony, who for many many years now have demonstrated they have no idea how to market a handheld outside of Japan.

Rest in Peace Vita. You may be a dead system and simply not know it yet, but I’m going to be playing you for a long time yet!

Posted in Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Tech, Toys | Comments Closed

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