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Dragon Week: PBMs

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

What are PBMs you ask? Well I have mentioned them before; they are ‘play by mail’ games. All but dead now, they were much bigger in the 1980s and frequently advertised in Dragon. Today’s post showcases a few of these ads.

Here is a standard ad, chosen because the game was ran from an office (home?) in Cohoes, NY (which is where we used to live):

Expensive isn’t it? $15 to startup. They don’t even mention the cost per turn in that ad, which would be $3, or $6 monthly. Crasimoff’s World ended up having a longer life than most PBMs. In fact it is still played today!

This next advert is for a computer moderated game with excessive (in my opinion) costs for what was probably a very dry and basic game. Note that the better you play, the more you pay!

As with all things in this genre, licensed PBMs seemed to be quite popular as well. I have no idea how successful they were, but I would have to imagine very if they hoped to turn a profit. By far the most advertised was this one:

I can’t even imagine the job of moderating what a game in which the players just submit fanfiction as their turn!

Here is another licensed game, no doubt born from the popularity of the films that came out in that era:

Free setup and rules? Turn costs must have been excessive.

The last advert for today is truly mind boggling. Think of one of the most unlikely licensed properties for a PBM, and then tell me if this is even lower down your list:

The mind boggles doesn’t it?

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

Dragon Week: RPGs

Monday, August 8th, 2011

Dragon magazine was the official Dungeons & Dragons printed by the manufacturer, TSR. It ran from 1976 to 2007, and I infrequently purchased issues as a child (usually only when they included new monsters). For the past few years, I have been purchasing old back issues at a local game store, and reading them cover-to-cover (literally!) for humour and nostalgia value.

Many times I have run upon advertisements that I thought were unusual/funny/nostalgic/sad enough to include here on the blog. And so, in the spirit of this post, this week I will be showcasing a large selection of such adverts from the pages of Dragon. Each daily entry will have a theme (of sorts), and the first one today will be based around ‘role playing games’.

The magazines these were taken from date from 1982 through 1991, but the vast majority come from the mid 1980s.

What better place to start than with a D&D advert from about 1982, although at a glance you’ll be mistaken for seeing the 1970s here in the clothes and art. I wonder if a game like the one shown in the photo ever occured?

A downright horrible ad from about the same time for another TSR role playing game, the space-themed Star Frontiers. I include this because the art is by legendary fantasy artist Jeff Easley, who would go on to paint about a million pieces of art far, far better than this. I bet he cringes everytime he remembers just how awful this is. (Fun fact: doesn’t the boy on the left look like a young Oz Clarke with hair?)

Despite the magazine being (mostly) for TSR product, the majority of advertisements were for other games. These range from forgettable and bland, to downright horrible, to just awe-encompassing in their weirdness or outrageous claims. Two examples of the latter:

Gods Of Harn was apparently “The standard by which fantasy religious systems will be judged”… I wonder how that worked out?

This full-page ad would have cost the company big $$$. Would you buy the game based on this? (I will admit the art – and especially caption – is craptacular!)

Speaking of diving right off the deep end with regards to marketing, check out these…

That’s the entire ad, which is about 2×2 inches in the magazine. Good to know that this Noon Drakon was drawn by a REAL artist (as opposed to an amateur).

And here we have an ad for a game with no rules that still manages to be better than any other game ever made. Given the (lack of) material in this ad, it’s hard to believe anyone sent the $20 (approximately $45 today) for Lords Of Space!

Amidst all the RPG and other (as you will see this week) adverts, every now and then a gamebook ad pops up. This was of course during the heyday of the medium, and it’s interesting to see how they were advertised in the USA back in those days. Here is a selection (click to enlarge):

Here’s a US Fighting Fantasy ad:

The art, if you’re wondering, comes from the US imprint of the second FF book, Citadel Of Chaos.

Here’s an unexpected advert for another FF-related product:

It’s a nice ad for Black and White, but it forgot to mention the puzzle book is almost impossible to solve!

This next ad is of interest to people that know altogether far too much about gamebooks:

That there is a full colour, back cover advertisement for a product that was never released as shown (due to licensing issues). Gamebook collector that I am, I find this more than a little enticing. I do have some ‘Middle Earth Quest’ books (as they would eventually be called), but I’d love to know what happened to those samples shown in that photo.

Enough gamebooks! Check out this ad:

Yes, this is White Dwarf magazine before the existence of Warhammer. In England last year I told an employee at a Games Workshop store I used to buy White Dwarf back when it was an RPG magazine and he looked at me like I was talking nonsense. I draw your attention by the way to the blurb at lower right. When was the last time you saw a magazine advertised on the basis of who the editor was?

I’ll end today with one more RPG advert, this time for the USA developed Doctor Who RPG:

I have included this ad for a reason. I have a feeling that my brother’s thoughts are frequently drifting to the following:

What shall I purchase my brother as a gift when he completes his PhD later this year?

The solution, brother of mine, is in the above scan. Hint: Look closely between the pewter figurines of the Dalek and the Brigadier 🙂

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

As (I) Predicted

Friday, July 29th, 2011

On August 12, Nintendo is dropping the price of the 3DS from $250 to $170. This is because sales of the system have plummeted (only 700,000 units sold worldwide in the last quarter) and developers have started cancelling existing games or bypassing the system entirely.

I don’t have a 3DS. This is remarkable, since I am more or less a textbook ‘early adopter’. I spend more on games than any person I have ever met, but have so far passed on the 3DS for several reasons:

1) A stunning lack of good games
2) A reluctance to embrace a system with an average game price of $40
3) Irritation at the frankly terrible online support of the 3DS (no messaging, no achievements, no PSN or XBox-live-like system)
4) Virtually zero interest in the main gimmick of the device: the glasses-free 3D
5) The very poor battery life

You’ll note price is not one of the above reasons. Will an $80 drop convince me to buy it? Let’s see.

The above problems with the system are important and need to be fixed as soon as possible. They would be bad enough were Nintendo to not have any competition. Ignoring the old DS itself (which still outsells the 3DS), Nintendo is being absolutely steamrolled by this:

I’ve been saying this for a while, but the iPad/iPhone is changing the way we look at entertainment in so many ways. Why pay $170 for a dedicated gaming system where games are $40 each? When you can buy an iPad (admittedly more expensive), enjoy games for $2, $1 or even free and then use the device for oodles of other things as well?

Customers realize this, and that’s why the iPad has outsold the 3DS 55-to-1. This is why developers are moving to the iPad in droves (Electronic Arts recently said iPad is their fastest growing market and that traditional consoles account for only 40% of their revenue) and this is why the average quality of games on the iPad increases every day. Why spend millions to develop a console game when you can make an iPhone game for under $100 grand and make just as much profit?

I will eventually buy a 3DS. Maybe soon, maybe when Animal Crossing is released. There will be good games on it, of that I am sure. But I truly think the system will be a limited success, if at all. I think Sony’s upcoming Vita will follow the same fate (or perhaps exist more or less as a Monster Hunter enabler, if only in Japan). I think the days of dedicated handhelds may be behind us, to be replaced with iPads and iPhones and whatever future smartphones will be released.

I’ll keep my thoughts about the affect this change will have on the games themselves to a future post.

Posted in Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku | Comments Closed

New Old Australia Video: The Rest

Sunday, July 24th, 2011

Here’s the rest of the older videos I felt worth sharing. Apologies to AW for revealing his darker side to the world at large (in my defense it was the least embarassing AW video I had…).

As for my hairstyle… I have no defense 🙂

For starters, here is Dad drinking the world’s worst smelling beverage:

Jump backwards in time 8 years to see dad show off his new Gameboy. I wonder if he’s beaten that high score (5087) by now:

Here’s mum in the same year, never thinking this particular video would ever be publicly available worldwide:

We’ll call this next one the segue to the two left to come. Notice mum laughing in the background:

And then there’s this video for which I take no responsibility since it was shot by my brother:

Ok, ok I have to comment. What were we watching Adam? Was that wrestling? And were you referring to the wrestler Raven? It’s interesting how empty your shelves are…

By the way if you’re wondering about that hair, I present the official 0th worst photo of me ever taken, which was a self-portrait taken during that 2000 trip to Australia:

Word’s sort of fail me now, so I shall let my 2000 self do the talking in this last video:

Posted in Family, Games, Miscellaneous, Tech | 1 Comment »

Monkey Magic

Friday, July 15th, 2011

It is a source of some frustration to me that in these days where everything seems to be available online and video formats are more or less a thing of the past, that the 1978 Japanese TV show ‘Saiyuki’ (known as ‘Monkey’ to Australians) has never been made available in the USA.

Monkey was based on the classic chinese tale Journey To The West, published more than 400 years ago in China. It told the story of a Buddhist monk who sets off for India to receive some sacred Buddhist scripture. Accompanying him on his journey is the powerful and brave Monkey King and Pigsy, a once-heavenly general reborn as a pig-man. Hijinks and adventures follow, and you can take my word that the novel is a good read even today.

Back in 1978 the Japanese made a TV show about the legend called Saiyuki, and it went on to become a big hit not only in Japan but also in Australia, the UK and other European countries as well due to a wonderful BBC translation. Here is a compilation of scenes from the show:

It was played non-stop during my youth and in fact up until me leaving Australia. I saw every episode countless times and loved them all. Sadly no NTSC version has ever been made available, and although someone (the BBC?) still holds the rights to the English language version, they’ve never put it on iTunes or any other download service available to Americans.

I’ve been thinking about the series a lot recently because I recently finished the excellent PS3 game Enslaved, which is also based on the same tale (a futuristic take this time). In fact Journey To The West has been inspiration for quite a few movies, manga, anime, TV shows and video games over the years, not the least of which is the famous manga series Dragonball.

Here’s Monkey himself in various guises, including the well-known Goku:

Here’s the good monk Tripitaka, who was so famously played by a woman in the original series that all later incarnations seemed to become female!

And here’s Pigsy (known as Oolong in Dragonball):

Those Enslaved graphics look almost too good to be true don’t they? Well they are not, and it’s easily one of the most beautiful and well-animated games I have ever played.

Monkey, Dragonball and Enslaved: 33 years separate these three very different – but all great – versions of a 400+ year old story. I’m sure there will be many more versions told in the future.