Category: Games

Intellitourney 2015

July 13, 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 😉

The Fabulous Owlbear

May 22, 2015

First, read this post Adam did on his blog.

I’ve found a similar example. Here is the owlbear (an owl-bear hybrid monster) as illustrated in the first ever AD&D Monster Manual from 1978:

I have a copy of this book. It’s the 6th printing, from 1980, and was owned by KLS long before I met her. The owlbear in this version of the monster manual looks like this:

Fabulous isn’t it! It’s the only monster in the book that has been coloured in, but we can only dream she had done more as a child 🙂

Speaking of the owlbear… what’s this picture?

Interesting isn’t it? A few years ago it was revealed that some of the unusual monsters in AD&D were based on plastic toys. You can read the full story here (with more wonderful pictures). Based on the toy, and the supposition (which seems reasonable) that the toys were bootleg Ultraman monster toys, it’s obvious the owlbear is nothing more than… a kappa!

The kappa is a japanese water spirit which has a very rich mythology. Here’s an illustration done by Hokusai (famous for his The Great Wave Off Kanagawa) in the early 1800’s:

You can see the resemblance to the toy.

So what of the Ultraman connection? Japanese sentai shows often base their monsters on mythology, and it’s almost certain there is an early Kappa-based foe in one of the first few Ultraman series. I did a search and could only find one before 1978, a kappa-influenced alien named Tepeto in an episode of Ultraseven from 1967:

Not very owlbear-like is he?

So my guess is the original kappa designs (such as Hokusai’s) influenced the chinese toy which influenced the owlbear in AD&D.

What of the owlbear today? Here’s the latest illustration:

A bit literal isn’t it?

Sniper Girl

April 26, 2015

I’m a big fan of the Etrian Odyssey game series. Not only are the games fine examples of the first-person dungeon crawl genre, but they have wonderful graphics, due in no small part to the character designs of artist Yuji Himukai.

Here is his design for the female ‘sniper’ character from the first game in the series:

Therefore you can imagine my delight when Kotobukiya released this model kit:

Figure kits are rare, so I eagerly bought this one when it came out. Last week I assembled it. Here’s what was in the box:

So many colors of plastic! So much detail on the pieces! Even before I pulled the runners out of the bags I was impressed.

Very quickly it was clear this was a god-tier kit. The engineering of the pieces was superb, and almost no trimming or sanding was required. Everything snapped together tightly, but articulation of the joints was perfect. The balance was also incredible, quite an achievement considering her tiny feet!

She was very easy to put together, and on top of the ease was a lot of fun. It took me maybe 2 hours only to finish her. Although she’s on the base in these shots, she can actually stand unsupported:

There is some customization decisions to be made. She can have her goggles on or around her neck, she can hold the bow by her side or in a firing position with arrow cocked, and she can have one of four faces: