At the Mandarake rare bookstore in Nakano mall, I happened to notice the attendant (a stunning Italian lass cosplaying as Sailor Moon) packaging some sort of Japanese RPG rules book for sale. I asked if they had any others – daring to think I may finally, after six trips to Japan, find a gamebook – and she directed me to the glass case outside. There I saw this:
And this:
And this:
And more, including some AD&D books and quite a few Japan-specific titles. Almost all in fantastic condition but also sporting fantastic price tags. As a rule of thumb, estimate ¥100 at about $1.
I would have needed over $1000 to buy all the Fighting Fantasy titles alone…
Now it’s hard to leave me speechless these days, but this sight did. I’ve been looking over and over again every time we’ve visited Japan for gamebooks and never ever seen a single one before. My mind was blown; I was overcome. But it was early days in the trip, which means I wasn’t yet at the point I was spending without reason. So I only bought one item – the cheapest one – this:
FF Gamebook 19, Demons Of The Deep. I bought it when it was first released in 1986 but at the time wouldn’t have known (or cared!) that it was also released in Japan.
Here’s an interior shot:
You can see there’s little trace of western influence here, with vertical text and using Japanese numbers! The presentation is beautiful though, with very sharp printing and perfect reproduction of the art.
The book comes with a separate adventure sheet with rules on the back:
And includes a nice section at the end detailing the other available gamebooks:
It’s noticeable smaller (and thinner) than the western editions too. Here it is compared to my UK and US imprints:
I’m enormously happy to finally own a non-English FF book, and something about it being as exotic as in Japanese makes it quite special.
And yet I do regret not buying more. I wasn’t going to spend over $300 for Sky Lord, but why didn’t I buy at least Out Of The Pit? Silly me!
Now I move toward the next challenge: a non-English Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Given it was published in over 20 languages that shouldn’t be too difficult. Should it?
