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2018 in Games

Saturday, December 15th, 2018

I know you love them, and I know you were waiting with baited breath, so it’s time once again for the year in review of my game buying!

Overall the year was down in spending, but up in aquisitions. Here’s the beloved plots, in a shiny new format to silence the haters…

First, by total games purchased:

And secondly, by total dollars spent:

Some interesting information here. For instance, who would have thought I would have bought more games for the (Sega) Game Gear than any other console in 2018?!? What about the Genesis, or NES or even PSP? And from barely being on the charts last year now the Switch is #1 in dollars spent? Let’s unpack these a bit…

Firstly there was a definite retro trend in my buying in 2018. Of the $936 I spent on games this year, over $200 was for dead systems. And since I’m not buying the pricey games (I own most of them already!) this translated to a lot of purchases – over 30 – for ‘dead’ systems. Much of this was boosted by a mega-haul of 12 Game Gear games picked up in a Scottish CSX for under US$20, but I also wandered out of the occasional retro game store over here with NES and Genesis games this year and even found (for only $3!) a sealed copy of a UK PSP game at – of all places – a NY City street vendor stall!

Secondly the handheld market collapsed. In 2017 I spent almost $750 on 3DS and Vita games alone. In 2018, I bought 80% fewer games for these systems and spent under $120. It’s entirely possible that in 2019 I buy nothing for either system. This is melancholic, since I have always been a big fan and booster of handhelds and don’t personally feel the Switch is the replacement. A good thing therefore that I have approximately 875 handheld games in my collection to keep playing for ever 🙂

Thirdly the Switch roared into first place, backed by an amazing lineup of games, a beautiful piece of hardward and a very promising future. There’s a lot to love about this system, not the least of which is that it is cartridge based, but for me the migration to the Switch of many iconic Japanese developers bodes very well for the future in terms of the sorts of games I like.

Deciding on my favourites in 2018 was very difficult because there were so many great games I played. I considered the copout route of doing one per system as well but even that was hard. So I’ll do the cop-copout route and talk about franchises, and in 2018 it boiled down to two for me:

Monster Hunter Series

Amazingly 2018 saw two MH series games released. The first and most important was Monster Hunter World for PS4 (first pic) which came out early in the year and took over my life for weeks. It’s a magnificent tour-de-force of a game, absolutely worthy of the many accolades it has earned and I eagerly await the expansion due next year.

In the middle of the year Nintendo finally got around to translating the Switch version of Monster Hunter XX (second pic) and once I had uploaded my save file (from the 3DS prequel) and set foot into the new G-Rank content I was giddy with joy. After the changes of MH World it was like visiting an old friend and coupled with some amazing new opponents – the final mantis boss in particular – this may have been the most fun I had ever had playing MH. Alas, I fear World had stolen the fanbase though, and online play was barren. Perhaps this was because I was at the very edge of progression (I broke the HR barrier I think the day after I got the game) and there were very few players at my level? Either way I beat all the content mostly solo and once Nintendo required payment for online play put the game aside to play everything else.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Series

I played the third and fourth Xenoblade Chronicles games in 2018, both on Switch. The first (Xenoblade Chronicles 2) was a 150-hour massive open world RPG with incredible gameplay, amazing graphics and finely detailed ‘systems’ that would dazzle a statistician. Just my sort of game in other words. But did it surpass Xenoblade Chronicles 1 or X? Hard to say: it was at least as good and maybe better. The series is remarkable for it’s consistency though, and every game is well worth playing.

Later in the year a ‘DLC’ was released that was basically an entirely new game. Titled Torna The Golden Country this reused a modified version of the XC2 engine to tell a story set in the same world only many thousands of years before. And this game was astonishing, to the point of perhaps being the single best game experience I had in 2018. Highly recommended (although you’ll need XC2 to play it…)

So once again Xeno and MH games bubble to the top, but I have to add that these were simply the brighest sparks in a year full of excellent games. From the Vita (Danganronpa), 3DS (Etrian Odyssey 5), PS4 (Hollow Knight) to Switch (Super Mario Odyssey) there were countless other games that could have made the top list any other year.

So what does 2019 hold? I expect the trend of less spending will continue, especially as I am becoming increasingly likely to delve into my collection and replay games I already own. However the Switch is the big unknown. I’ve already purchased two retro collections for the system (Namco and SNK), two more are on the horizon (Capcom and Taito) and if the trend continues and the old Japanese arcade companies release more and more of their content for the Switch then who knows how much better the console will get? In another year you can find out… 🙂

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

Deathtrap Dungeon

Sunday, December 2nd, 2018

That’s Deathtrap Dungeon, the 6th Fighting Fantasy book that was published way back in 1984. It’s a classic title, one of the most famous books in the range, and has inspired countless other gamebooks and video games.

Here’s some more editions from my collection:

Clockwise from top left they are the 2017 Scholastic version, the 1984 Dell USA version, the 2009 Wizard version and the 2002 Wizard version.

And here’s another version:

The above has been one of my ‘Holy Grail’ gamebooks for years. It was published in 2009 by Hobby Japan, and as you can see it’s definitely not like the others.

It’s still Deathtrap Dungeon, although obviously translated into Japanese. This isn’t the first Japanese version either, since FF books were published there during their original run too. But in 2009 Hobby Japan gave the books a distinctive anime makeover with a short-lived reprint series.

Whereas in FF books you are the hero, and therefore the player character is rarely described and even less commonly named, in this edition the player character is this adventuress named ‘Philia’ (according to my translation software). She still challenges Baron Sukumvit’s evil Deathtrap Dungeon for fame and fortune, but her experience is distinctly different from the one I first had in 1984.

For instance here’s the ninja I encountered in the original version:

And here’s Philia’s ninja opponent:

What about the iconic Manticore? Whereas originally it was the focus of the art during its encounter, now it seems to be photobombing a Philia selfie:

The fighting hobgoblins:

What about the disturbing (to my 12-year old self in ’84) one-handed man:

There are other cases where opponents switch gender (a crazy old man becomes a young witch etc.) but most of the illustrated sections are actually new and don’t correspond to the old ones.

I can’t read Japanese, so I can’t determine if the text itself changes. But it must if only slightly to accommodate the gender switch of some of the encounters? I wonder if it’s still in the first person though, or if Philia is directly referenced in the text?

As for the makeover, it’s undoubtedly because Hobby Japan was trying to market these to otaku in the wake of the success of the Queens Blade series. The all-new art is possibly due to the original art becoming pricey to license since the artist (Iain McCaig) had become quite famous in the intervening years (he designed Darth Maul for instance).

As best I can tell, there were three books in this reprint series. Deathtrap Dungeon is #1, I also have #3:

And #2 was House of Hell, advertised here in my copy of Deathtrap:

As I suggested, these are both difficult to find now and pricey when you do. My Deathtrap cost me $40 and took three months to arrive from Japan. One day I hope to get House of Hell, but I’m not sure it’s worth $50+ to me. Further books in the same series exist, but don’t seem to be FF titles (for instance one is an AD&D gamebook (?) based in the ‘Eberron’ game world).

As a curiosity though it’s lovely, and I’m extremely pleased I finally own it 🙂

(I obtained a few other gamebook curiosities this year. Maybe I’ll do a future post on them…)

Posted in Books, Collecting, Gamebooks, Otaku | 1 Comment »

My Collection: Playstation

Tuesday, November 20th, 2018

The Playstation, Sonys first video game console, was released in the US on September 9 1995. I bought mine that very day and it quickly became my favourite console. While it wasn’t the first CD based console, and was even arguably weaker than the Sega Saturn released a few months earlier, the Playstation (PS1) was an immediate success, and in the months and years ahead would change the video game industry from a hobby aimed at children to a hobby for all ages.

That’s the third Playstation I owned, the ‘PSOne’ model that was released late in it’s lifestyle (in 2000). My first two Playstations had died in the intervening years, both due to laser failure which was a common problem for the system. The above photo shows a portable screen attached to the unit itself, but it also obviously can be used with a TV.

I bought about 150 games for the system during it’s active years, but I traded in more PS1 games than for any other system and only own about 75 today. It was a fantastic system for role-playing games, and most of what I keep to this day is in that genre. It was also the console that helped ‘3D’ games (polygon based) mature, although this was in part coupled with a detrimental effect on 2D games that took years to subside.

That said, the graphics are very crude by todays standards, and as a result many PS1 games have dated poorer than the bitmap-graphics games from the previous generations:

The console had a long lifespan though – about 6 years – and developers learned it inside out by the end. Comparing a late-generation game to a launch game is like comparing two different consoles, and some of the late 90s releases still impress today.

The system used black discs more for marketing than effect (piracy was still rampant) and while in those days we were astonished by the larger amount of content (and voice, sound and video) games could contain the drive speed was slow and this was a very common part of the PS1 experience:

It makes playing games from disc a somewhat tedious process these days, at least on original hardware. But while fun to poke fun at, it wasn’t so bad 20+ years ago assuming the game itself was good, and thankfully many of them were.

The above are three of my favourite games of all time: complex, lengthy and rewarding dungeon crawls each with a different style. Symphony Of The Night and Valkyrie Profile has since been released (in fact I purchased the PS4 port of Symphony Of The Night just two weeks ago!) but Vagrant Story remains a system exclusive. This game is notable for many ways, not the least of which is it was set in the world of ‘Ivalice’ which would eventually become the setting for FF12 many years later. It’s a true masterpiece, and I wish Square would have decided to remake it instead of FF7.

Speaking of Final Fantasy the system was also home to three main-series games (FF7 through 9), an incredibly good spin-off (FF Tactics) and a multitude of rereleases of the earlier games in the series. I bought, played and still own them all.

Few people remember that the PS1 is where the ‘Souls’ series began. The above are the first three games in the series, and while of a different genre (1st person dungeon crawls) are every bit as bleak and punishing as the Dark/Demons Souls series. King’s Field is the earliest PS1 purchase I still own, being bought a few months after the system was released.

I was writing for Working Designs during the PS1 era, and they were a somewhat prolific company known for the lavish packaging of their games. This was the early glory days of the translated RPG in America, and they rode the wave to great success.

Many of the games I own – including most I have shown – are worth a pretty penny these days. Some of the ones in my collection are valued in the hundreds of dollars and every time I do a post like this I briefly consider selling my collection. But as usual I won’t, and they’ll go back into the box for another indeterminate amount of years.

The PS1 sold over 100 million units, was successful all over the world, and spawned a legacy that has continued through 3 other consoles (PS2, PS3, PS4) and two portables (PSP, PSV). Over the years I have bought over 700 games for Sony systems, and while they’ve moved away from the portable console market now, I don’t see the Playstation brand ending any time soon.

Original PS1 hardward these days is arguably useless. The followup console – the PS2 – was fully reverse compatible and provides a much better way to play PS1 games than on original hardware. Furthermore the hardware problems (mostly, as mentioned, the laser) and issues connecting old models to new TVs mean it’s not in particular demand. However many of the games still are worth playing, and in a couple of weeks Sony is released a ‘Playstation Portable’ plug-and-play device similar to those Nintendo has had such success with recently. I personally think the game list and choice to forsake analogue controllers leaves a lot to be desired and have little interest in this new device, but I hope that it succeeds and is for many a reminder of the history of one of gamings most important ever releases.

For me, I’ve still got my 2000-model PSOne and screen, as well as a big box of amazing games. I reckon I’ve got at least another playthrough of Vagrant Story awaiting me some time in my future…

Posted in Collecting, Games, History, Otaku, Tech | Comments Closed

Passage To Maouv

Tuesday, September 18th, 2018

I bought this at a local con some months ago:

It’s an old book and record set from 1975 and yes it still includes the record:

The idea was that kids would read the comic while listening to the record, and these things were very common back in the day.

This particular story involved the Enterprise transporting a telepathic catlike creature between planets only to be jeopardized by its mental powers when it escapees it’s cage and becomes terrified. It’s empty fluff of course, but would have made for a curious tv episode. Amusingly, it was written by Alan Dean “I’ll write anything” Foster!

When I bought this it was sealed in a protective sleeve and as soon as I opened it the stench of cigarettes overwhelmed me. This is a prime example of why collectibles that come “from a smoke-free home” are worth more on the secondary market!

Anyway let’s enjoy the story, albeit briefly. You’re about to hear this page:

Here’s the video:

Your first question is whether or not this is a performance by the original actors, and I don’t know the answer. I found conflicting information either way online but since my record player seems to have a perishing drive belt there’s a slight pitch offset on the audio which confuses things. (At the end of the video I set the pitch back to the default so you can hear the speed issue.)

I will say if these aren’t the original actors they’re very good soundalikes!

Your second question is what the hell is up with Uhura in the comic! That’s another I can’t answer…

Anyway it’s a good product overall and I was very surprised by the quality of the record. Even though it’s short (~16 minutes) it’s professional and very respectful to the show and I reckon Star Trek lovin’ kids in ’75 went bonkers for this!

Oh and if you’re wondering they managed to avoid disaster due to a feline crew member who was able to calm the alien cat down before it enslaved everyone:

Posted in Books & Comics, Collecting, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Retro, TV | Comments Closed

A Couple Of Crafts

Monday, September 10th, 2018

It’s been a while since a craft post, and while these two aren’t particular novel I thought they were unusual enough to warrant a mini showcase!

I saw these Figure-rise Bust kits in Japan last year but they were all of (Gundam) characters I didn’t know. Recently however this Miku kit came out and I had to have it. And yes, it’s an actual kit and not a figure:

Pay attention to the face which is molded in many colours thus eliminating the need for stamps:

Assembly was easy, and even though the kit did include some stickers they were easy to apply and are mostly hidden:

Completed, it looks amazing!

The only customization I did was using my Gundam paint pen to give her black fingernails. She’ll sit now forever on a shelf looking pretty 🙂

Next we have this LEGO kit I bought in Scotland:

This was one of those kits designed by ‘normal’ people that – since it received over 10000 votes online – became a real product. It’s based on Tron Legacy, which is a much, much better film than you think…

Assembly was trivial for a LEGO prodigy like myself and I liked the unusual colours and ‘Tronny’ aesthetic. You can either have Sam fighting Rinzler in a high-stakes disc battle, or battling via lightcycles on the grid:

It’s a nifty kit, well worth the cost for someone who appreciates Tron Legacy as the masterpiece many incorrectly think it isn’t. It’ll now sit forever on my shelf looking digital.

Posted in Collecting, Movies, Otaku, Toys | 2 Comments »

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