Category: Miscellaneous

Savoring The Adventure

  • March 20, 2019

Behold, a birthday gift I received from my brother:

As you know I’m a bold and adventurous eater, so of course I could hardly wait to try! Needless to say the master chef in me read the instructions carefully (and checked to see it was within the sell-by):

Here’s what it looked like before preparation:

Add some water:

After sitting nine minutes:

And beautifully served:

Now I’ll admit I was leery. The smell had frankly turned my stomach and it looked more like spaghetti-in-a-can than the gourmet beef and pasta creation I myself am known for.

But I’d come this far and wasn’t going to stop:

The verdict: it was shockingly good!

At this point I’ll share a small anecdote. Last year on Orkney I purchased for myself an instant spaghetti product packaged like a ramen. I ate it one night before painting a series of Ring of Brodgar postcards and was astonished by how good it was. It was, at the time, the best instant meal product I’d ever eaten, and if you were impressed by the quality of my Brodgar watercolors know my belly full of instant spaghetti helped drive the creative spirit that night.

This product though: it’s better!

Yes it’s overly tomatoey (and will likely give me reflux due to acidity) and yes the meat pieces feels like eating pencil erasers and yes the noodles themselves lack any strong consistency (I suppose we won’t care about al dente after the nuclear war?) but – and I say this clearly and without sarcasm – I greatly enjoyed it and almost ate it all!

So there. Two thumbs up. Recommended. Get some!

Dungeons & Dragons LCD

  • February 10, 2019

Before Christmas I visited a nifty local retro store and the shop owner, who recognizes me now, said he may have something I wanted. He reached under the counter and produced this:

Yes, the game was inside:

This is a handheld LCD Dungeons & Dragons LCD game from 1981. I’d been wanting this for many years but had never seen a copy for sale. I opened my wallet and handed over the $80 he was asking in light speed!

The game is complete in box with the instructions, which are well-written and remarkably long for a game like this:

It’s a maze game in which you must defeat a dragon or die trying. Gameplay takes place on a 10×10 grid of rooms and you can move around in any direction until you either kill the dragon or are slain.

As you can see your current location is shown, and via the ‘cursor’ and ‘move’ buttons you can head in either of the four directions. There are no walls or dead ends; each room has four exits and the maze wraps around. Some rooms contain pits (which end the game unless you have the grappling rope, as I do above), bats (which move you randomly) or the dragon (game over).

You’ll need the magic arrow (found randomly) to kill the dragon, and you get one shot only to try. The dragon icon above reveals that the dragon is in an adjacent room. I took a gamble and shot north and failed, and then I headed east and…

Game over!

It’s very difficult. 13% of the rooms are instant death, and with only one rope and one arrow the chance of success seems minor. I played about ten games and only found the arrow twice and only once did I encounter the dragon while I had it.

As a child I would have loved this game, carefully mapping it while playing to assist in victory. It’s only the second actual D&D electronic game (the other, a board game, we also own) and is probably the first actual ‘electronic RPG’ (of sorts). While it does have a score, that’s only if you win, and since it’s time-based I imagine luck plays too big a factor!

Note the text: Look for other exciting games in the Action Arcade Series! It turns out there was only one other – a Masters Of The Universe game that is identical in gameplay to this one with a different LCD. It’s apparently even rarer, especially in the original blister packaging.

I’m happy with my purchase, and this is now a gem in my collection. Now should I do a followup post about the electronic D&D board game from 1980?

Tokyo Brothers

  • January 22, 2019

Those of you that follow me on Twitter would have seen a series of daily collages featuring the two of us in Japan. This post features those photos with description.

This was the first, taken at Adores arcade in Ikebukuro. I took the snap of Bernard first, then as we were leaving posed myself with the intention of reproducing the pose of the girl on the right, forgetting Bernard had done the same thing. When I reviewed my snaps later that night I noticed the similarity and a blog series was born!

These were taken outside Tokyo Tower. We’re both standing in front of a large poster put there undoubtedly for selfie purposes. Making these photos daily required scaling and occasionally rotation of the base images so they were best when taken from a distance.

This was taken at the very top of Skytree, which had a special Kingdom Hearts 3 exhibit. We’re both holding the keyblade in a diorama once again installed for photo purposes. I very much like the lighting on Bernard in his shot.

At Akihabara out on the street. This was a window display outside one of the first big game centers near the station. When we returned several days later these posters had been replaced!

Taken at Tokyo Disney, specifically in the Cinderella walk-through exhibit in the castle. The back of the seat has LED lights built into it that animate through a pattern, so we had to time the shots to get similar lighting. I like my pose 🙂

Taken at Nakano mall, posing at the photo-op board featuring their mascot Pipi. It was for kids and we had to contort ourselves to get low enough to put our heads through. Bypassers looked at us curiously…

Once again in Akihabara, standing before a giant poster advertising the new Hatsune Miku cosmetics line. It was very pretty art, but she’s devilishly holding a lipstick with ‘Eat Me’ written on it!

Looking through my snaps, in the 600 or so photos I kept from Japan there’s only 4 that feature the two of us. Three of them were already shown in my blog posts during the trip but I particularly like this last one of us taken on the final full day:

Japan was a nonstop and fantastic end to an overall amazing 25-day vacation. Australia and Japan in one trip?!? How am I going to ever top that??