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Japan Pickups: Gamebooks

Friday, June 21st, 2024

For the first time in years I didn’t find any Fighting Fantasy gamebooks for my collection this past Japan trip. This is perhaps not surprising since I already own 70% of the Japanese imprints, but you can bet my search will continue.

So what did I find?

I bought two more issues of the Japanese Warlock magazine, including #5. I now have 72% of all the issues, which is surely impressive considering I don’t even live in Japan? Maybe I should start trying to actually read some!

I was surprised to see two brand new rulebooks for the Advanced Fighting Fantasy RPG, and although I don’t actively collect this I couldn’t resist picking both up. I wonder how many people play this RPG in Japan?

As for actual Gamebooks, I picked up the above motley trio. The one on the left translates to (approximately) ‘Find The Great Heritage‘ and seems to be a systemless time traveling book with a female protagonist and terrible art:

The middle book is the first in the 2012 Japanese Grailquest reprint series, which I now have three of. As with the others I own this seems to be an enhancement of the original 1980s versions, with an expanded game and additional content at the end. It’s also got brand new – often creepy – art:

I wish these enhanced versions were released in English.

The last of the three gamebooks is a Japanese version of the first Fatemaster book (‘Treachery in Drakenwood’), which is further evidence that just about every gamebook series seemed to find its way to Japan. It’s mostly identical to the UK version, but includes a nice pull-out character sheet and map:

Lastly, I picked up the two Queen’s Blade The Live gamebooks that I didn’t yet own:

An explanation of exactly what these are is probably beyond the scope of this post, but let’s just say I find it hard to imagine anyone heading to their game store to play Lost Worlds/Queen’s Blade with one of them!

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Japan Pickups: Wizardry

Thursday, June 20th, 2024

Once again I made a few additions to my Wizardry collection this past trip, although for the first time in many years of Japan trips I didn’t add any actual games. Here’s what I got:

These are guides for the 6th and 7th Wizardry games, and as with typical Japanese game guides they’re in depth and comprehensive. One of the Dark Savant guides seems to be a transition of a western guide written by the developers (SirTech) but the other is Japan specific and written by a self-proclaimed ‘Wizardry Expert’! It’s worth nothing that I already have other Japanese guides for both games, and it’s quite possible others may exist!

This is a collection of three short stories set in the Wizardry game world. While I can’t read this, I’m guessing they’re all set in the world of the first five games, since things got a bit weird after that. This is yet another in a growing list of Japanese Wizardry novels I own, which now also includes…

This is an absolutely beautiful set of four more Wizardry novels, each by a different author and published in 1992. They share the trade dress of the first three games, and based on the extensive English on the front and back covers, seem to tell stories influenced by the games.

Each of these small hardcovers features a few colour art pages at the start, and have wonderful black and white illustrations throughout:

This is a lovely set of four books, and I dearly wish I could read them! For their quality they were extremely inexpensive as well.

Incidentally there have so far been two English-language Wizardry novels, one released decades ago and one only last year (by the write of Goblin Slayer no less)! I own both and have read the first, which was better than I expected.

My last pickup this trip was something I’d been hunting for a while: Wiz Ball, the Wizardry baseball card game (yes you read that correctly). This is actually the expansion to the original release, which still eludes me…

This contains additional magic and item cards to expand the main game. It seems as crazy as it sounds, and translations of the cards show that the various items improve things like batting strength or running speed and (as with the RPG) can only be used by specific characters. The magic cards utilize the same names as the game, but where Mahalito is an explosive damage spell in Wizardry, here it ‘increases ball speed by 2’!

Why does this product exist?!? Who ever thought to pair a technical and complicated computer RPG with a baseball card game? I’ll never know, but I’m glad I finally own it 🙂

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

Lunatics Only: ‘Ita’ Bags

Wednesday, June 12th, 2024

Look at this women waiting to cross the street:

Her bag displays 24 identical badges of an anime character (who I can’t identify). Furthermore each badge is encased in a protective acrylic case which themselves have been decorated with pearls and a little heart. The woman is probably my age.

The above may seem unusual, but it’s an increasingly common sight in heavily otaku parts of Tokyo like Akihabara (where I took the photo). For example every day I’ve been out since I returned to Tokyo I’ve seen several people with such displays on their bag. Here’s another for instance:

Excuse the blurriness: it was a stealth photo taken of a guy (yes a man) on an adjacent escalator. He had eighty badges of all the five characters in Quintessential Quintuplets; sixteen badges for each girl. His bag was massive!

This phenomenon has its own tools, chief amongst them being the bags themselves. These are called ‘ita’ bags, which is a contraction of itasha which means ‘painful car’ and derived from the practice of covering a car with pictures of anime characters. I’ve seen a few shops selling these bags such as this one:

This company (website here) makes many different types of bags in various sizes and styles. All of them have the essential plastic side for display of badges, and many of them also have a slide-in or reversible piece to make the bags ‘work safe’!

They’re not cheap shopping bags! Even the smaller ones cost $50+, so these are quality bags in addition to enabling the display of badges. At their shop was a sign that suggested they also have bags that allow the display of trading cards, but there weren’t any on display. It’s also worth mentioning that the badges cost as well: maybe $5-10 each, so large displays of identical badges are a sizeable investment!

This is an entirely different level of fandom. It’s normal to have favourite characters, but to almost literally wear them on your sleeve in public to this extent is classic otaku behavior and – in my opinion – is admirable. Fundamentally this is only a few steps beyond wearing a branded t-shirt, which is behavior no one would blink at.

So when I saw the above girl with her eighty identical badges of the same character all lovingly placed so they’re all at the same orientation and offset I of course chuckled (as I reached for my camera) but at the same time I saluted her for her spirit 🙂

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Lunatics Only: Games

Wednesday, June 12th, 2024

As with virtually every Japan trip, I’m spending a lot of time in the many retro game stores. Unlike previous trips, I haven’t yet purchased anything! I will since my Wizardry collection is nearly complete and the few remaining games I don’t have are very elusive. It’s still fun to look:

When I purchased the above Wizardry Empire game over five years ago (on 1/13/19 to be precise) I paid ¥2700. It’s now over ten times more expensive! This is just one of many examples of how retro game prices have skyrocketed in recent years.

It used to be notable to see even a single game in a shop over ¥100000 (about $630 in today’s money) and now they are common. The above shelf for instance contains seven Famicom (NES) games, none of which are under $1000. And then I saw this yesterday:

As someone who has made good money selling his collection during this market, and turning around and spending some of that money on Wizardry games, these prices astonish me. This Battle Formula game is about $3600, which is probably more than the cost of the entire vacation of most people walking into the store. Who’s paying these prices?

It’s definitely not to play the games. These days you can play them all for ‘free’ via emulation. Those buying them are doing so because their collections are as deep as their pockets, and owning them makes them happy. Or perhaps they’re buying them as investments (which I think is unwise since surely this market will drop?). Either way, retro games are the new antiques.

The prices of game consoles is continually rising as well, and $400 for an unboxed Game Boy micro without a power cable would have been silly a few years back. I have the boxed version of the above. I bet it’s worth a lot more 🙂

Enough with prices, let’s look at some rare stuff. The red and white keyboard in the above pic is for the Famicom and came with a basic cartridge that Nintendo released over 40 years ago now. The keyboard is apparently very rare these days, and the above wasn’t for sale. (The other item is an MSX computer, also not for sale.)

Here’s a lovely boxed game for the X68000 computer. Largely known for its near-perfect arcade game conversions it was also a full-featured home computer with ports of a few western games including the first Might & Magic. I was strangely tempted to buy this but controlled myself.

And here we have all three boxed Brandish games for the PC88 (another Japanese home computer). These are large boxes with beautiful cover art by Jun Suemi and these will be treasures in someone’s collection. I wish it was mine 🙂

Here’s a curiosity: a Japanese hint guide for an NES port of the old Firebird computer game Druid (a fun Gauntlet clone). This is such a weirdly specific and unusual item, and just the sort of thing I love seeing in the retro shops.

And to end this post, how about an ultimate retro game collectible: an original Galaga arcade board! It’s ‘only’ about $300, but it is original to 1981 and is a piece of video game history 🙂

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Lunatics Only: Handhelds

Monday, June 10th, 2024

In the last few years I’ve noticed an increase in the amount of LCD and VFD handhelds appearing in Japanese retro game stores. Where once these were overlooked by most retro gamers, they’ve now become sought after amongst collectors of my vintage and prices continue to rise.

The kings of this category are of course Nintendo Game & Watches. We all had them in the 1980s, but most were tossed away. Very rare are surviving boxes, which is why the Flag Man (second from left) in the above pic is over $750. I recall many years ago seeing a full set of these in a store window in Mandarake. These days a full set would be worth tens of thousands of dollars!

I own a few of these, and they’re in great condition. Seeing these prices today for poor condition examples was a bit eye-opening!

The game on the right is one of several licensed LCD games, this time based on the anime Aura Battler Dunbine. It’s very likely a poor game – Nintendo cornered this market for a reason – but its high price (~$260) would be all about the license. Some of the licensed Bandai LCD games sell for almost as much as the rarest Game & Watches, especially the old Gundam and Ultraman games.

Here’s a shelf of old VFD games. They’re not very expensive (~$30 each) but I’d wager many have screen or capacitor issues and of course they all lack boxes, which would likely at least triple the price. If I had space I would have taken a risk on at least one of these.

We used to own the Scramble machine on the right (and I bet Bernard can remember the tune as well as I can) and we played it like mad baboons. It was one of the best selling VFD games worldwide, which is probably why even boxed the unit I saw today was only ¥6600. Had I the space, I would have purchased it in an instant. (Also check out that so-bad-it’s-good art on the Lupin box!)

The above is the sort of thing I love seeing in the retro game shops of Akihabara and Nakano: an amazing looking VFD I’d never heard of but absolutely would have wanted as a child. The theme is Ancient Greece with monsters, the box art is beautiful, and the game graphics are very detailed for its time (you can watch the original Japanese advert here). The price was about $300 which is obviously too high for me but there’s some Japanese guy my age who had this as a kid that’s going to buy this without hesitation 🙂

I don’t think I’ve ever blogged something like the above before: a ‘junk’ item. These are common in the retro game shops, and the term is used to describe something that is known to be broken but can also be put on items that simply are not tested (which often means presumed to not work).

This one is an LCD pachinko game – or rather was a pachinko game. If it had worked, I probably would have bought it for several times the ~$5 they were asking.

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

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