Category: Games

A Game For Men

May 21, 2025

Australia is famous for the ferocity of its fauna, and therefore it’s not at all surprising that yesterday I came upon this:

Yes my friends, this is Animal Kaiser Plus: The King of Animals. This is nothing less than an IC card game based around animals fighting to the death! I sat on the tiny and suspiciously close to the ground seats and could hardly throw my $2.80 in fast enough to give it a play.

An ‘IC card’ game refers to a game using physical cards that are read/scanned by the machine during play. These are very popular in Japan and this is my first time seeing one in English. If you don’t have a card to scan you are giving a default player character, which for me was Leo, The Lion Cub.

The ‘gameplay’ consists of pushing one button to get a random number (between 10 and 50) which – if higher than the opponent – leads to an attack. It’s so simple even a child – a toddler – could do it and it’s obviously no major challenge for a venerable gamer like myself.

So when my Leo, The Lion Cub was repeatedly beaten senseless by the ‘Teck’ attacks of an Asiatic Black Bear I suspected this ‘playing without a card’ business was a handicap.

Happily the game vends a card every game, and after humiliating ursine defeat I received my first card. I hurriedly fed in more credits and purchased two more cards: and thus my team was complete:

Philistines may say it was pure luck I happened to get exactly one animal, one ‘strong’ and one ‘miracle’ card in three rolls – thus providing one card for each team category – but those heathens don’t understand my level of gaming skill.

Those Philistines also wouldn’t begin to observe that this game is a simplified reskin of Japanese arcade classics such as Mushiking or the various Ultraman or Kamen Rider games I often play in Japan. I’m intrigued the system has ‘gone west’, albeit in a non-licensed form.

And so I unleashed my empowered Black Panther upon the animal kingdom, and his righteous fury made mince meat of a bear and a Goblin Shark before he was in turn blown back by the juggernaut of all beasts: an elephant.

It’s perhaps fitting the game then provided me a Goblin Shark of my very own – with evocative attacks including ‘Kande Burst’ and ‘Sledge Gauer’ – although my lethargy by now was absolute and I had to tear myself away from Animal Kaiser Plus: The King Of Beasts without seeing how the shark fared. What other fabulous cards were waiting inside?

Even if I never see this game again, I’ll remember it forever.

The Men Who Turned Their Homes Into Arcades

May 13, 2025

The title of this entry is taken from the above book, which I bought a few months ago. It’s a beautiful ‘mook’ (magazine book) showcasing home arcades built by dedicated Japanese enthusiasts. While it’s in Japanese, I was able to read it using a translator.

I’ve also become a fan of topic-specific Japanese books like this, and have already purchased (and read through) similar ones about the history of certain game genres. The writing and detail in those impressed me, so I had high hopes for this one as well.

I was not disappointed: this book is fantastic, and the mania of some of these collectors fills me with profound respect. Page after page of beautiful photography shows rooms – sometimes multiple – of Japanese homes where every square inch is now dedicated to reproducing a Game Center in their house. We’re not talking one or two machines, but ten or more, including massive things like fishing games or even hydraulic sit-down cabinets.

There’s loads of wonderful and awesome anecdotes, of which the following is just an example

One man modified his home to add a massive external door on the second level so large cabinets could be installed from outside using a crane.
One man – a massive fan of the train game series Densha de Go! – has an entire room dedicated to arcade cabs of the series and even twice rented a train line so he could play his arcade cabs on actual running trains.
There are several stories of people having ceilings/floors reinforced to handle the weight of games, or removing doors, closets or even walls to make extra game space.
One guy took years to ‘brainwash’ (his words) his wife into letting him get his first arcade cabinet. A few years later he had a room full.
One man installed public toilets in his house incorporating fixtures he obtained from a closed Sega arcade!
Another man obtained an electricians license so he could rewire his home rather than pay someone else to do it.
One guy built his Game Center into a closet so it didn’t eat up living space can be invisible to guests (or family) when the door is closed.
An accountant converted his business waiting room into an arcade!
Several of the home arcades include common 1980s-era arcade extras – such as drink machines or coin changers – but one guy took it further to only include Showa-era coins in his money changer. (This is like a retro USA arcade only using 1980s quarters for their machines.)

Most allow friends and local children to play the games, and many are members of enthusiast clubs. The latter is important since maintenance is often cited as a big issue and being in a club would make it easier to find someone with the skills required to keep 40+ year old tech working.

I’d love to be able to do this myself, but for many reasons that’s impossible so I enjoyed living vicariously through this wonderful book. It was successful enough for a second volume, which I also own, but I’ll probably leave reading that one for when I return:

Ultraman Cards

March 9, 2025

I bought this in Japan:

It’s a box of the initial set of the new Ultraman card game! Even single packs of this was difficult to find in Tokyo, and I only saw boxes for sale in Nagoya. It wasn’t very expensive; about $30 for a sealed box of 20 packs.

At the time I hadn’t seen the English language cards for sale in the US, but in the last month or so packs of both the original set and the first expansion turned up at a local comic store. I bought every pack I saw, and opened them all.

The cards aren’t particularly attractive, and the first set in particular is heavy on images taken directly from the TV shows. It only features Ultras taken from the last couple of decades (no Showa era Ultras at all) which is ok, but I wish it was more art-based and less photographic.

The cards themselves are well manufactured, made of thick stock with a premium feel compared to other TCGs. The chase cards are beautiful, with the ones I pulled having metallic effects, rainbow foiling and embossing. But they’re spectacularly rare, and in about 40 packs (including all my Japanese ones) I only got one (of 40) ‘AP’ cards, and no SP, SSSP, UR or ExP cards!

I don’t know how to actually play the game, since I’ve failed to find any of the starter decks for sale here in the USA! Almost no retailers have them, and sellers online ask silly money. Hopefully I’ll get them one day and see if the game is fun 🙂

As I said this is a brand new TCG launched recently (with some fanfare) by Bandai. It’s a little surprising since Bandai have so many other TCGs on the market including Battle Spirits, which recently released these two Ultraman expansions:

There have been several Ultraman expansions for Battle Spirits over the years, with these two being the most recent, with the blue one in particular only being released last December. Kristin got me a box of each for my birthday.

The red expansion box came with a single card box topper promo pack (which I haven’t opened) and the set contains 69 cards in four levels of rarity. With 20 6-card packs, how much of the full set could I get?

I can’t play this game, and the cards are very wordy and entirely Japanese but they’re so pretty! This is the level of design the official Ultraman game needs in my opinion.

All the cards (even the commons) are embossed, foiled and plastic coated making them all feel like thin credit cards. And these packs are significantly less expensive that Magic packs, which asks the question why is the quality of Magic cards not at this level?

The blue expansion box included a box-topper and a promo for the new Ultraman TCG, which I found amusing. This set has 75 different cards once again in four levels of rarity.

The cards are the same high standard as the other set, and the rare cards just as spectacular:

I’ve only opened a few packs of each, and will probably finish opening the over the next few months. Even though I can’t play it, I like these cards much more than the official TCG, and I wish it were these ones that had been translated into English 🙂

Robot Claw