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Treasure!

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2014

I went to the bank earlier, and walked out with a $1 coin. This isn’t much news to the Australians, but here in the US we’re still cursed with paper $1 bills.

The coins do exist though, and are mostly ignored by the public. I bought one because I collect them….

Yes this is another post about one of my strange collections!

Back in 1999 the US Mint started releasing a series of 50 quarters to commemorate every state. Five were released every year, and apparently they became the most collected coins in US history, with about half of all Americans (!) collecting a set. And at least one Australian…

I didn’t go out of my way to collect them, since they were (and still are) extremely common. I just kept one of each as I got them in change, putting them into the little book I had purchased.

The set was followed by 6 ‘district and territory’ quarters and now we’re in the middle of a series of 60 (or more!) ‘America The Beautiful’ quarters featuring state parks and other notable natural attractions within the US. Compared to the state quarters both of these follow up sets seem much rarer and I haven’t made any effort to collect either.

The Presidential Dollar series began in 2007 and was intended to promote acceptance amongst the population of a $1 coin. Five new coins were to be released a year but the coins were a failure and after 5 years circulation ended. The coins are still made, but for the collectors market only.

In theory I could fill that book just with coins if receive in change or at the bank. They are difficult to find these days though, so I doubt I will.

The last US coin book I have is this:

I’m not sure why or when I got this book, but I have made an attempt to fill it:

This is not a collection I put any effort into!

In addition to these I have a nearly complete set of Australian 20c, 50c, $1 and $2 coins. If only someone made little collecting books as nice as the ones I have for US coins.

I could probably do a dozen or more posts about other weird collections I have. They’ll have to wait for next Christmas 🙂

Posted in Miscellaneous, Otaku | 1 Comment »

Worse Than The Pezzes?

Sunday, December 21st, 2014

That’s a shot of a hot wheels car I recently purchased. It’s beautiful isn’t it? Bernard certainly thought so, as he unwrapped the one I sent him yesterday! Looking at the back he saw the other models and seemed to love this one even more:

Maybe I should have sent him all of them?

So you’re thinking “Why did he buy these?” and the answer is quite simply that I don’t know. No one knows. But I did and now they live in the same box as the Star Wars pezzes I showcased the other day…

Now the story should have ended here. But, sadly, there’s more. I went out shopping the other day and beheld an employee putting out new product in the toy section:

OMG! More – different – SW hot wheels?!? I don’t like toy cars, never buy them but once again was suckered by the packaging! (Plus they were only $0.88 each!)

The cars aren’t even anything special! But I dug through the display like a mad ferret and hastily gathered all eight:

So that’s 13 (dreadful) Star Wars themed hot wheels I’ve bought in the past two months. As I delicately placed them into a storage box where they all reside for all eternity I dearly hoped I’d never buy any more ever again 🙂

Posted in Otaku, Toys | 1 Comment »

2014 in Games

Saturday, December 20th, 2014

During 2014, my game collection saw its smallest growth in 17 years, but I ended up spending more in total than I had in the last 4 years. How was this possible?

That’s the answer: I went into 2014 without a Vita (PSV), and will leave the year with a Vita and 20 games for it. This isn’t to say I adore the system (it has many flaws…), but it does have many of the sorts of games I like to play and since I believe the system is dead, I rushed to buy them all this year before they became difficult to find.

In total I bought 46 games in 2014 and spend a total of $1613.90. That’s an average cost of $35, which is a big increase over previous years. This is because I bought zero iOS games this year, and instead concentrated on 3DS and PSV software.

Here’s the charts:

That’s the breakdown of units sold per system, with the Vita at 20 and the DS at 1. Despite being owned for longer than the Vita, at only 5 games purchased the Wii U isn’t seeing much use…

That’s the dollars spend breakdown, and you can see the Vita ate the lion’s share of my spending. The tiny sliver for the DS is because the only game I bought cost $5 🙂

As for the games themselves, and my playing habits, looking back on 2014 I would have to say it was a mixed bag. The entire first half of the year (and into summer) was a bit of a drought, with me not playing much at all. In particularly I barely ever turned on the consoles (PS3 and Wii U) during those days.

But then something clicked after my summer vacations and I found myself become re-interested in gaming as the year moved into the fall. In particularly I very much enjoyed some Vita games like Toukiden and Demon Gaze and by mid fall the 3DS had me entirely under it’s spell with two masterpieces (see below).

BeforeI get to my favourites, two games deserve a special mention…

The first is Super Smash Bros for 3DS. This year Nintendo released Smash Bros on both 3DS and Wii U. I purchased the 3DS version, and will eventually get the Wii U version as well. The 3DS version however was, in my opinion, a bit of a square peg in a round hole. While Nintendo did an admirable job of stuffing a massive amount of content in, the game suffered from poor controls and a design not ideal for such a small screen and I put it aside quickly, with the intent of saving myself for the Wii U version.

The other game is Puzzle & Dragons, last year’s game of the year winner. Yes I’m still playing it (>580 days played now), yes I’m still loving it and yes I still think you should play it too. But I won’t include it in favourite lists this year since it disqualifies having won last year!

So my favourite games of 2014, in reverse order:

3) Hyrule Warriors (Wii U)

This one came out of nowhere! Koei stuffed Zelda into the Dynasty Warriors engine and produced a game almost better than both! If you like hack-and-slash games then this one is for you, and the astonishing amount of content could take hundreds upon hundreds of hours to beat. Bravo Nintendo!

2) Theatrhythym Final Fantasy: Curtain Call (3DS)

Curtain Call took everything that was good about the first game, multiplied by ten, and produced maybe the best sequel ever. I played this like a demon, leveling every character to maximum (sometimes more), SSS ranking every song and collecting all the cards. This is a music game ever that can stand along side Ouenden, and took over my life for a month or so earlier this year. While I was playing this I would have said it was a no-brainer for game of the year, but then something else came out…

1) Fantasy Life (3DS)

Level 5 have created an action RPG with near perfect controls, beautiful graphics, and vast amounts of stuff to see and do. In addition to the usual systems (fighting monsters, casting spells, talking to NPCs etc) the game includes twelve classes (from Paladin to Cook) and you can go fishing, brew potions, make (hundreds and hundreds) of items, armor and weapons and recruit followers. It starts off easy and a little confined, but after a dozen or so hours of play you realize how mind-bogglingly big it is and how much time you’d need to max everything. Which I did. Including all the expansion ($9 on the 3DS store) content! All told I played for about 150 hours before putting it aside, but I suspect one day I’ll return just to finish off the (very difficult!) ‘Master Quests’. This isn’t just the best game I played this year – this is one of the best games I have ever played. Highly recommended.

As I always do I’ll end with a question: how was your year in games? What were your favourites in 2014?

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

Into The Dungeon!

Wednesday, December 17th, 2014

Some months ago I purchased this at a con:

This is the Dungeon! board game, based on Dungeons and Dragons and originally released in 1975. This is the 1989 ‘new’ version, which added a couple of player classes but in all other respects is identical to the original. Our set is in fantastic condition except for one omission: the rules are missing! Luckily they were only an internet search away!

Here’s the board all set up and ready to go, with only the player selection yet to happen:

Each room has a treasure and a monster. The rules are simple: kill the monsters, take the treasure (each of which is worth a gold coin value), and collect as much as is required by the character you are playing. Here’s what we chose:

Both these classes require 30,000 gold to win. The wizard (me) can cast spells but is weak at melee combat. The Paladin (KLS) is a melee fighter than can heal themselves. Within a few minutes of play we had easily plundered most of the level 1 treasures and KLS had obtained two +1 swords (making her more powerful at combat):

It’s a fun game since both the monsters and treasures are hidden, and there’s an element of strategy involved in planning your route and deciding if you’ll take it carefully and stay on the upper levels (with the paltry treasures) or delve deeper and risk terrible foes for big treasure rewards. I mostly did the former, but KLS dove ever-deeper in search of big ticket items.

Here’s me fighting off a green slime on level four:

The yellow ‘-‘ means it is immune to fire, which was half my arsenal. Luckily I had a lightning bolt (grey) and took it out easily. While I had amassed a kings bounty of treasures, their average value was low and KLS was fast catching up as she entered level five.

And then she entered this room:

Now on paper this battle didn’t seem that bad for her. With her two swords she only needed to roll 8 or better on two dice to kill it. She didn’t though, and the dragon counterattacked. This meant it got a 2d6 roll of it’s own… and it rolled a 2! This is the only way a character can die, and it has only a 1/36 chance of happening. Madelyne the (alliteratively named) Paladin was dead!

This meant all her treasure – about 15k worth – stayed in the room with the dragon. KLS had to restart with a new character, and she picked:

The warrior is a no-fuss type, lacking special skills but needing much less treasure to win. With her powerful melee attack, KLS planned to mop up the remaining level 2-4 rooms for a quick win. There was also a big pile of treasure in a Wight room that the wizard had dropped fleeing from a failed combat.

The race was on – me heading toward the dragon to cheese it to death with spells from outside the room (and therefore avoid counter attack) and KLS barreling to the wight to get the stuff I had dropped. As it turns out we both reached – and defeated – our monsters about the same time, but since I was closer to the dungeon exit I made it out first and was very narrowly crowned victor.

We both enjoyed the game far more than we thought we would! For such a simple design it’s a lot of fun, especially with the uncertainty of which monsters and treasures are where. We didn’t even venture into the deepest level (6), since the level 5 beasts were challenge enough. But next time we play we’ve decided to play cooperatively, and go for the full dungeon clear of all 80 treasures. That will be fun 🙂

Posted in Blog, Games, Otaku | 1 Comment »

Pezzes Are Cool?

Tuesday, December 16th, 2014

I thought, since many of you have asked, it’s time to showcase my Pez collection.

What is a Pez? It’s a horrible, horrible candy that I never eat. I really hate them – they taste like medicine to supertasters such as myself. However they are often sold with little sculptured dispensors, and occasionally I have been known to buy them just for the dispensor. Many people collect these avidly (indeed, the pursuit of rare Pez dispensors is what led to the original creation of ebay). I don’t. I just buy them at the checkout line in Wal-Mart every now and then.

Over the years these became a bit of a ‘gag gift’ for Christmas. In the last few years that trend increased as I started giving AW collectors sets every Christmas. Alas, 2014 bore no such set (so you’re safe this year Adam).

But enough blathering, let’s get to my collection:

That’s the first collector set I bought. It was released a few years ago and has characters from the original Lord of The Rings series. It sits proudly on a shelf, never to be opened. I gave this one to Adam and I believe it quickly became his favourite Pez set of all time.

This Star Trek: TNG set is also a couple of years old now. I had trouble finding it at first, and then was never able to find the limited version that replaced one of them (Beverly?) with Locutus of Borg. Again I gave this to AW, and again he treasured it, but not as much as SFL, who surely lists this on top of her list of favourite Pez collectors sets 😉

Last year’s Hobbit set, obviously following on from the LOTR set from 2011, is another that proudly adorns a shelf in my library. Again AW got this one for Christmas last year, but it’s probable that Bernard (who was there) loved it even more than AW since he was heard to bellow “What a grand Pez Collectors Set!”

Many times these past twelve months I daydreamed about what sets they could have done for xmas 2014… Avengers? Guardians Of The Galaxy? Godzilla? AKB48? Sadly, the store shelves remain bare of new sets this year.

Say it with me now: OMG! I bet you didn’t know about the US President series now did you? This is of course an entirely original idea by Pez, since they couldn’t have possibly been influenced by the US President series of $1 coins that started about the same time. Happily, I was able to collect both. (Jokes aside, the sculpting on these guys is very impressive). This first set came out way back, and (as with almost everything in this post) I purchased it on a whim in Wal-Mart one night. Months (years?) passed and I assumed there would never be another. But then…

And (oh my god, why) then…

Yes I have five different sets. These aren’t particularly expensive (I think about $10 or $12 per set) but even so I don’t know why I bought them. Even now I weep a single tear as I see them all on my shelves.

Pause for a moment here to remember I hate Pez candy and will never, ever eat it.

Here’s a C3PO Pez:

And this is a C3PO Pez:

And here, good readers, is a C3PO Pez:

What’s that you say? “They are all the same?” But are they?

Check out these completely different R2D2 Pez’s for instance:

Yep, completely different.

I’ve been purchasing Star Wars pez’s for aeons, and most of them have ended up in boxes destined to be forgotten for ever. It took some time to collect up as many as I could find for this photo:

But I’m quite sure that’s not the extent of the collection. I also suspect there are some I don’t have, since (once again) I never bother to check what’s available, I just buy one every now and then at the store. If you ever see a SW Pez I don’t own, please buy it for me 🙂

So what’s left? Well… nothing. I have no interest in any other Pez’s! I only buy the licensed sets (+ Presidents) and the SW stuff. There’s about eighty-megillion others out there but I don’t care. I’m not a collector of Pez’s. In fact I’ll go further to say I sortof hate them, including the ones I own. And I really, really hate the candy.

So please don’t give me a Pez, since I hate them. Unless it’s one I don’t have from the above series, in which case I must own it 😉

Posted in Miscellaneous, Movies, Otaku, Toys | 4 Comments »

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