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Space Invaders

Saturday, December 19th, 2020

Space Invaders may not have been the very first video game, but it’s probably the most historic. It took the world by storm and led to an industry that by 2018 had surpassed the movies. I’ve written before how I still remember first playing it about 40 years ago, and to this day the game retains a place in my heart.

So when I saw the line of Micro Arcade handheld games it was a no-brainer which one I would buy.

These are tiny little game systems about the size of a credit card. I believe the same basic hardware is used for the entire range of games which is why this one has two buttons and a four way controller (space invaders only uses left, right and one fire button). The design is very nice: it’s a solid little unit with good buttons and a nifty clear front so you can see the PCB. It contains a rechargeable battery and has separate on/off and sound switches.

The screen is impressive for its tiny size (less than 1 square inch) and the pixels are clearer than they look in this photo. You can see the game simulates the cellophane stripes that added colour to the original monochrome arcade game, which is a nice touch.

It is of course a rewrite of space invaders and not the original code. It controls and plays the same but is fiendishly difficult with very fast enemy shots. Unfortunately the iconic sound and music of the original is not reproduced (this is a major omission) but what is here is good enough. It also doesn’t save high scores when turned off.

All things considered, for the low price ($15) this is much better than I thought it would be and while it’s probably ‘one for the collection’ I’m intrigued enough by the tech to consider buying one of the more complex games they have released.

It’s also notable how advanced this device is especially for such a low price. If you could take this back to 1979 and give it to little me I would have thought it was magic. Imagine the technology the children of today will be using when they’re my age!

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

Mushroom Stamps

Sunday, December 6th, 2020

I had fun with those Dinosaur stamps a few months back, and decided to dip my toes back into the world of ‘topical collecting’. So I made an order at a stamp shop for a few inexpensive packets of stamps in various categories, and over the next few months I’ll go through them here on the blog.

Let’s start right now with… mushroom stamps!

100 stamps cost me about $5. I chose mushrooms because they were cheap and I was amused that they existed as a category (“Why mushrooms?”). It wasn’t clear if the packet was 100 unique stamps or whether there would be doubles. Let’s see:

There were no doubles! In total there were 104 unique stamps from 14 countries: Mongolia, Afghanistan, Benin, Paraguay, Romania, Burkana Faso, North Korea, São Tomé and Principe, Kampuchea (Cambodia), Guyana, Guinea, Nicaragua, Hungary and the Soviet Union (Russia). The country from which I had the most was North Korea, with 12 stamps.

The stamps spanned 28 years from 1968 to 2006. The above example is one of the two oldest stamps and is North Korean. It’s also one of only a small handful that have been actually used, since (as with the dinosaur stamps) almost all of these are CTO stamps made for collectors and machine canceled. Most are therefore still gummed.

There’s a bewildering variety! The above (from Mongolia in 1985) are diagonally printed and very large and some of the prettiest in the packet.

Quite a few were still attached, like these Romanian ones from 1985. Most were illustrations, but there were some photographic stamps as well.

My favourites are probably the stamps from Hungary. Not only do they feature lovely line art, but they are actually textured and the ink seems slightly iridescent. This series contains stamps in two sizes as well, and these bigger ones must have looked lovely on a letter back in 1984!

Incidentally just because these are (mostly) CTO stamps doesn’t mean they weren’t also used for mail. Researching these stamps I found examples of some of them that had gone through the post, so unlike most of the dinosaur stamps it’s likely some of these were used by postal customers when they were released.

So why so many mushroom stamps?!? I’ve learned this is one of the most popular categories for topical stamps, and a catalogue printed only few months ago lists 6144 unique mushroom stamps! So my 104 is only 1.7% of those that exist. It’s a good thing I hate mushrooms else I may be tempted to chase them all 🙂

And so they’ve gone into my album, which still has lots of space left to fill. It’s a good thing I have several packets left to open…

Posted in Collecting, Otaku, Stamps | 1 Comment »

2020 in Games

Thursday, December 3rd, 2020

It’s not finished yet but what a year 2020 has been! KLS and I have been staying (and working) from home for nine months now and will continue to for at least six months more. Lots of time for indoor hobbies then, like playing games! Well yes and no. Yes since we didn’t travel and rarely go out. No since we’re still very busy working, in my case more so than usual since teaching online is so much work!

I also had an event this year involving my left eye (which I never blogged about…) that unfortunately changed the way I can play games. I’ve worked it out now, but it led to a bit of a hiccup in my hobby for many weeks as I was adapting to the symptoms.

But my favourite hobby continues, and as always I bought and played games in 2020. I know there’s a month-ish left to go in the year, but with Christmas on the horizon I doubt I’ll buy any more games so now is as good a time as any to make the annual post.

In total, I purchased 50 games in 2020. This is a slight drop from previous years, but is in-line with my average over the past decade or so of buying a game a week. Of the 50 games purchased this year, a third of them were bought in a five day period in Japan in January, and none were bought between the release of Animal Crossing (on March 20) and mid June. Here’s the breakdown of titles bought by system:

As you can see the Switch has the majority (26 of them) and aside from the PS4 the remainder of the systems I bought games for is very retro! You’ll see the 3DS and Vita are gone (for good?): as I predicted they both retired in 2019. Every non Switch/PS4 game was bought in Japan, and most were Wizardry games 🙂

Here’s the breakdown in terms of dollars spent:

Of course it’s mostly Switch, but mostly due to the amount of games rather than the price. As with recent years I rarely buy games at full price, and am instead content to wait six months or so until they drop to about half the original cost. I made an exception in 2020 for Animal Crossing, but the best deals I got in 2020 were $1 for a brand new PS4 game (Journey To The Savage Planet) which was mispriced at Walmart, and $0.58 for a Switch digital game (Doom 64) since I used credit I’d earned buying other games. Notably one of the most expensive games I every bought was in 2020 as well – a used GBA game (Steel Empire) for $78. It was worth it 🙂

Incidentally this has very much been the year of the Switch. The system has come into it’s own in a big way, and many great games have been released for it (and are still to come). New versions of the Playstation and XBox have recently been released, but for me right now the focus is very much still on the Switch. I more than doubled my Switch collection in 2020, and it’s now 1 game shy of becoming the Nintendo console for which I own the most games. (The same is true for PS4, which at 114 total games is one game shy of surpassing my PS2 collection.)

As for the best games I played this year? Well the winner is surely Xenoblade Chronicles for Switch, but it’s the same game that came out almost a decade ago that I gave my game-of-the-year award to then, so I’ll let it go this time. I played a lot of other great games this year, here are three of the best:

Animal Crossing New Horizons (Switch)

This became a phenomenon when it was released. A game about escapism and happiness was tailor-made for an epidemic, and led to Switch shortages that even continue now many months later. You’ve probably heard about it – it’s already one of the best selling games of all time – and the hype is real. It’s loads of fun, with massive amounts of customization, and can eat up your time before you know. I played it religiously for several months and then stepped away. I’m not done for good; I just needed a break so I could play other games!

God Of War (PS4)

This one came out a while back but I only bought it at the tail end of 2019 and played it this summer. It’s a relaunch of a game series from the PS2 era and it’s astonishingly good. In fact it’s probably the best action game I’ve ever played and excels in every area: story, graphics, gameplay and design. I loved it so much I got the platinum trophy, which I rarely care about these days. It’s dirt cheap now so if you haven’t played it, you should.

Ring Fit Adventure (Switch)

This is a fitness game using a circular device into which you place the Switch controllers. You play through a surprisingly complex RPG (with stats, items, equipment, techniques etc) which is fully controlled by yoga and exercise moves. Do a series of squats to defeat the enemy! Run on the spot to get to the boss! Tighten your abs to defend! It sounds gimmicky but feels very natural when you’re playing and is loads of fun. This one was almost impossible to find for many months (we got lucky in the summer) since I assume every Switch owner bought this as well, but I’ve been playing it since I got it and dutifully ‘do my Ring Fit’ every day now. Is it making me fitter? I can’t say, but I’m happy It’s giving me exercise as we move into a freezing winter.

Before I end this years summary, a brief shoutout to Puzzle & Dragons. Yes I’m still religiously playing my little ‘phone game’, and have now surpassed eight years without a single missed logon day. I’m well, well, well into the endgame but it’s still fun and still – in my opinion – unsurpassed in it’s corner of the market. Try it if you haven’t yet!

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

Trash in the Attic

Sunday, October 18th, 2020

Prices for collectibles of all sorts have skyrocketed during Covid. There’s many theories for why and I’ll not speculate here, but I’ll say it’s made me look at my game collection in a new light.

But the other week I read an article about how old Pokémon cards in particular have seen insane price rises. To explain: Pokémon started (and continues) as a game series, but about 20 years ago become a collectible card game as well. When it did we bought some cards but never really played them, and our cards had languished in a box ever since.

Prompted by the article I got them out for a stickybeak…

In addition to several hundred loose cards I even had some sealed product. These would have collectively sold for quite a bit had I kept the packaging, but as is were worth very little.

But within my loose cards I found a few gems:

Some of above are promos and I no longer remember where I got them. One was a game pack-in card and one (the top right) was pulled from a pack I bought at Target on a whim about 17 years ago. These four shown were worth about $150.

This was my true gem. Note the ‘1st edition’ symbol on the left side: that increased the value significantly. If I had paid to have this professionally graded and sold it myself on eBay I may have got $500+ for it.

But I didn’t do that. In fact I sold the cards to an online store since I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of selling them myself. Aside from the work of sorting it all it was fairly easy just packing them up and waiting for the cheque to come.

And yesterday it did, for $389.92! Not bad for cards I didn’t have any attachment to that were sitting in a box in a closet!

All told I sold them about 75 cards, and about $350 of the value was in the five shown above. The remainder of my cards – hundreds of them – were worthless (less than $0.003 per card) and I trashed them.

So if you have any mint condition 20+ year old Pokémon cards in your closet it’s time to check them; you may be sitting on a nice little payoff 🙂

Posted in Blog, Collecting, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Trading Cards | Comments Closed

My Collection: Wizardry

Sunday, October 4th, 2020

A bit of a change for this post: rather than showcase a particular console collection this time I’m focusing on an entire game series. Here then, all my Wizardry games.

Wizardry was first released in 1981 for the Apple II and would in time be ported to a massive amount of different systems. I recall first playing it on an Apple computer at Charlestown library and falling in love immediately. Here was Dungeons & Dragons and Fighting Fantasy in game form!

The first Wizardry game I owned was the one shown above (which I rebought recently: read about it here) for the C64. I played through a few in the series on the C64 and when Bernard bought a PC I quickly bought and played the newest editions (Wizardry 6 and 7) upon release. I was mad for them!

But even though Wizardry has also been released on consoles I had no idea at the time, and wouldn’t play a console installment until I came to America. Neither did I know the series had a vibrant life in Japan – even more so than in its home country – and it was many years before I started playing Japanese versions.

Here I’ll present the games in my collection in more or less release order, and not the order in which I obtained or played them.

Those are the three NES/Famicom installments, which are ports of Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord, Knight of Diamonds and Legacy of Llygamyn (aka. Wizardry 1, 2 and 3). As you can see I have the three Japanese releases and only the cart of the US release of Wiz 1. The second game was released here but I’ve never seen it for sale, and the third never got localized (yes these were all Japanese games localized for the US since even by this point Wiz was bigger in Japan).

These are direct ports of the Apple originals and this is evidenced by the instructions. I have read some of the more USA-centric references (like pop culture puns) were removed to better appeal to the Japanese players, and as time went on their games would get darker and develop their own style whilst retaining the systems of the parent series.

The presentation of these is beautiful, with metallic inks on the boxes and large (over 50 page) detailed manuals. Unfortunately I can’t play the Famicom carts since they don’t work on an NES. One of these days I should buy a Famicom…

These are the three Japanese Game Boy Wizardry games and you can see they’ve deviated from the original series into a spin-off series called Wizardry Gaiden. These are amongst the most prized items in my game collection: they are in pristine condition, are beautiful and fully complete including the massive manuals and the trading cards:

These cards could be a blog post unto themselves! For many years Japanese Wizardry games came with a trading card randomly chosen from a set unique to that release. Collecting these must have been almost impossible since there’s so many of them, and when it comes to buying the games used in Japanese retro shops the versions that still include cards go for a king’s ransom indeed!

Moving into the SNES/Super Famicom era I’ve got the above: versions of Wiz 5 and 6. Heart Of The Maelstrom is a fantastic game on the SNES and I’ve always been meaning to replay it.

There are other SNES Super Famicom installments as well, including the fourth Gaiden game and a port of Wiz 1 through 3 that was purchased at a kiosk and written onto a rewritable cartridge! Obtaining these games today would require very deep pockets.

The above item is interesting: my Japanese hint guide to Wizardry 5 for SNES. When I play it again you’ll bet I’ll be using that for assistance!

I have two of the Wizardry Empire series on GBC, and this system has more installments as well that are too expensive for me (I saw two for over $200 each in a JP retro shop). The Empire games are derived from the Gaiden series (which itself was a spinoff from Wizardry 5) and included some interesting additions such as requiring certain items to switch to specific classes. These are lovely games that I must get around to playing in full one day…

Speaking of high prices a special mention here for the Wonderswan version of Wizardry 1, which is one of the rarest and most collectible games on the system. If you’ve got $400+ gathering dust, why not buy it for me?

Here’s an oddity: the PC version (sans box) of the last US Wizardry game. I bought and played this myself when it was released in 2001, and recall thinking it was quite a good game in it’s day (these are my original discs). The game was not a success, and more or less killed the series on these shores.

There were several installments on the PC-Engine including direct ports of the first 6 games in the main series. I’ve got the above version which includes games 1 and 2. I’ll never play this since I don’t own a PCE or the CD attachment, which is a shame since a look at the robust manual shows the games are entirely in English!

The original PlayStation saw many different Wizardry installments, including another Gaiden sequel, a game called Wizardry Dimgul and a few ports of the original games including the one I own, Crusaders Of The Dark Savant (Wiz 7)! It’s nicely presented and even comes with a map:

Alas it’s apparently poorly coded and very slow to play, which is a shame.

Strangely there was only one ever GBA Wizardry game which I bought during our first trip to Japan (in 2002). I played through and beat it thanks to some translation assistance from Adam’s sister: thanks Amber!

The above is the last physical Wizardry release in the USA, for PS2 back in 2002. It’s a fantastic game with beautiful graphics and the expected difficulty and I devoured it when it came out. Japan had many sequels to this game, but none made it stateside.

The above DS games – again, all Japanese – are installments in the ‘Wizardry renaissance’ that occurred after the original parent company (Sir Tech) went out of business. By now Wizardry as a series had been well and truly claimed by Japan and US releases weren’t even considered. Wizardry Asterisk was a remake of Wizardry 1, and the two games at the bottom (both limited run amazon exclusives) were a self-contained two game series (called Wizardry Semei no Kusabi and Wizardry Bokyaku no Isan) that I paid quite a bit for. They have wonderful graphics and I really should play both…

The above is the PSP port of the fifth game in the empire series (confusingly named Empire III) that I bought several years back in Japan for the most I’ve ever paid for a game (about $100). I recall struggling to play it though, since it has no English and is such an unknown game I could find barely any help on the internet. Maybe I’ll try again one day?

Incidentally I’ve since seen this game selling for considerably more than I paid, so I assume it’s very rare.

In 2011 the final true Wizardry game to be released in the US came out as a digital only game for PS3. Naturally I bought and played it and you can read about it here. As a digital only game for a now obsolete console it basically isn’t playable any more which is a shame. I wish the disc version (which came out in Japan) had been released here.

As I’ve mentioned there are many other Wizardry games that were released in Japan for consoles, Japanese computers (like the PCFX or X68000) and for mobile systems (including a gatcha roguelike which was ported to PC and may even still be on Steam). They even nearly made an IC-card based Wizardry arcade game!

The game has even inspired or directly led to numerous closely related spinoff series (mostly for PSVita) including Class Of Heroes (essentially Wizardry done anime-style; the code apparently calls the game Wizardry 8!), the Operation Abyss series and the Sword City series. Happily most of these were localized and I’ve beaten them all and could easily do an entire post on PSVita Wizardry derivatives!

But even in Japan it’s now been many years since any true Wizardry game saw a physical release, and I suspect there may never again be one. My collection is somewhat complete but has some notable omissions that I’ll always be keeping an eye open for, and I’m already looking forward to the next time I can spend a day browsing the retro shops in Japan looking for a new (old!) game I don’t yet own!

And I swear I’ll play them all one day 🙂

Posted in Collecting, Games, Otaku, Retro | Comments Closed

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