Category: Otaku

Review: Game Poke

October 7, 2017

If you visit Japan, eventually you’ll see gashapon vending machines. They’re virtually everywhere, and a mind-boggling array of items can be obtained from them.

On our recent trip, one thing I got out of one such machine – for the princely sum of ¥500 – was this:

The ‘prizes’ are random, but this particular machine only had one thing inside. Here’s the contents:

And a detail of the device itself:

It’s a handheld video game called ‘Game Poke’! As you can see above, the instructions are in Japanese. But this is the Space Age and that’s hardly an obstacle any more:

Basic stuff really. The Rotate button allows us to ‘Bray the game’ (although it actually doesn’t), and the S/P button allows us to ‘game of the start or stop temporary’ (in actuality it does neither).

But who needs instructions?!? Batteries were included, so lets fire this thing up:

What’s this? This little Poke contains 99 games? The buttons allow you to select the different games, and there appears to be (up to?) 26 in total. However each game has variants as well, not to mention 99 (!) difficulties and a wide range of speeds. How much of these are actually different is difficult to tell, but there’s certainly an impressive amount of variety.

You can see it ‘fakes’ a larger display via a 10×20 pixel LCD display with status bar on the right. The LCD contrast is poor, with ‘off’ elements too visible, but there’s no way to reduce it.

The games themselves are, of course, abysmal. Consisting mostly of execrable pseudo clones of Atari 2600 Combat, unplayable ‘driving’ games and others that seem like pixels just randomly flickering on and off there’s just no way anyone would ever enjoy actually playing this thing.

But it does have (19 versions of) Tetris, and I’ll be generous and say they at least work. The device is speedy and the buttons are responsive and it even has a beeper for sound, but it’s extremely tiny and as a result very hard to control.

That’s a closeup of the status bar, which strangely features an awful caricature of a small Asian child (man?) who flaps his hands up and down endlessly while the unit is on. The scores themselves are virtually meaningless since it always and only increments by 100 regardless of game or what you do. I doubt anyone has ever cared about a score they achieved on this device.

Overall, to no-ones surprise – this is a terrible game machine. ‘One for the collection’, as they say, this will be stashed inside a box never to see daylight ever again 🙂

(Intriguingly I ended up seeing ‘Game Poke’ gashapon in a few places in Japan. On one of them a note was attached to the front explaining in English and Japanese that only one in five of the devices actually worked. The others apparently were fakes with stickers on their screens and intended solely as keychains. It seems therefore I got lucky?)

The Stamp Collector (Part One)

September 23, 2017

Over the decades I’ve been alive, I have amassed a slight collection of stamps. Mostly in the form of first-day covers to be true, but I hardly turn aside when confronted by a lovely loose stamp either. Philately was my first hobby I suppose, and thought my childhood collection is (mostly) gone now, I still seem to have retained the gene.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing the bulk of my collection, loosely divided into thematic posts as a stamp collector may be inclined to do. Where relevant (or possible) there may even be a bit of history as well, or maybe just reminiscing since some of my oldest personal possessions are stamps.

Today we’ll start… with animals!

This is what’s called a ‘first day cover’, which is an envelope – usually appropriately printed – on which a new series of stamps are all placed and then canceled. It’s done on the first day the stamps are issued, and is intended for the collectors market. It’s a cheap and easy way to obtain the stamps themselves, and convenient to store as well. As a youth I used to buy these now and then, and as an adult I buy them more often (although strangely never here in the USA).

Look long enough in thrift/collectible/antique stores and you’ll find loads of these. I do, and I have spent hours over the years flipping through them. These days I only buy them in three categories, one of which is animals. Most the first day covers you see in this post were purchased this way during the last decade or so. Most of them were very inexpensive, maybe $1 or less. I’m no diehard collector, and more pick at the worthless dregs because I think they’re attractive than invest in ugly rarities 🙂

The above cover, despite dating from my stamp-collecting youth, was only bought a couple of years ago.

A more recent purchase. Australian post offices still have sections for stamp collectors and you can find things like this right out on display. It’s pretty isn’t it?

Another ‘Australian’ example. Many stamps are issued from Christmas Island solely (I believe) for the collectors market. You’ll see a few others in these posts. Note in the above example that the cancellation is themed to the stamp series as well. This is unusual and illustrates the collectors nature of the Christmas Island issues.

A few from the UK. I have obscured the addresses. Most of the time when I see British first day covers for sale they are addressed, although rarely show signs of having actually gone through the mail. I wonder if collectors in England address the covers to themselves? The stamps themselves are all fantastic, with detailed artwork and metallic accents. Even those these cost me only 50p apiece a few years ago I love them 🙂

Two different examples of a first day cover from Antartica, specifically Ross Dependency, which is the part of the continent claimed by New Zealand. Bernard got me the above on his trip last year, and while they are certainly unique I feel they are unmailable. The envelope is too busy and glossy. The stamps would have been better displayed on a plain white envelope, perhaps with some line art of a hydroid or sponge at the side. (Even so, I doubt I’ll ever get any more Antarctic first day covers!)

Some American examples. I bought these at the stamp museum in Washington whilst chatting to the shop girl. I don’t think they ever got many customers (I was the only one at the time) and she was very curious about Australia so I happily answered her questions as I leafed through hundreds of $2 first day covers looking for animals 🙂

I particularly like the Arctic Hare stamp. Imagine a postcard with 20 of them on the back! Overall though the above are a bit dull compared to those from other nations in my collection. However I’ll get back to the USA at the end of this post…

The colours and vibrancy of the above are evocative of Fiji, an island nation few in the northern hemisphere seem to have heard of but for an Australian in 1983 seemed exotic and (undoubtedly) full of parrots. What it wasn’t full of in those days though was people, with a 1970 population of less than half a million. Interesting therefore that they would produce such a lavish stamp set and have dedicated cancellation for it! Again I suspect the production of collectible stamps was done for profit, and I don’t doubt that collectors around the world would have loved an example like the above (which I bought in an antique shop in Katoomba a few years ago).

A bit of a mystery this one, in that I don’t remember where or when I bought it. It’s Swiss, issued in 1976 to commemorate animal protection, and the picture shows a deer and a swallow I believe. It’s plain and a bit severe. Maybe the best word is ‘neutral’ considering the origin.

I’ll end with two more from the US that I bought very recently in Vermont:

Aren’t they both great?! Putting aside for a moment the fact that a stamp was ever issued with a Pika on it, note that the top cover shows a US stamp canceled in Canada? I wonder what that means, if anything.

The last example is wonderful for a few reasons:
1) It’s a squirrel stamp
2) The beautiful art on the envelope
3) It was the first-class (domestic) stamp in issuance when I came to the USA. I remember affixing these to letters (well, mostly bill payments) for years until it was replaced in 1995. When I had the chance, I’d always buy squirrel stamps at the post office, and there’s a very real chance I sent cards/letters to some of you by putting multiples of these on them.

As I said in the intro, there’ll be many more posts like this coming up. There’s a few other themes to look forward to (yes, including ‘Zodiac’) and not everything will be first day covers either. Look forward to it!

My Collection: Genesis

September 17, 2017

Sega released the Sega Megadrive in Japan in late 1988. About a year later it was released in the US as the Sega Genesis. I can recall when the PAL version came out in Australia back in 1990, but was still so entrenched in arcade gaming that I didn’t think much of it.

When I came to America KLS owned one, and that system is still in our possession today. Usually when I do these posts I list all sorts of details about when it was purchased and how much I paid for games and that sort of stuff, but for mysterious reasons virtually all my Genesis games were omitted from my game collection database, so I can only say the bulk of my Genesis games were purchased ‘before 1996’.

The system itself is very large and very black! Ours is a first-generation, which means only RF outputs on the back and quaint additions such as a headphone jack and volume switch right on the console! I don’t have a CRT TV anymore, so I have to connect the RF signal to an LED flatscreen which isn’t ideal… but at least I get a picture! You can see me playing Wonder Boy above, which is a fantastic game. I only wish it were arcade perfect like the Master System version 🙂

The Genesis for me always felt like a strange bridge between Japanese and European gaming. Take Alisia Dragoon for instance, which is a Japanese action-platformer featuring a female protagonist that owes no small debt to Turrican. The box art for the US version is a classic in my opinion, and while (slavishly?) adherent to the game itself suggests a lot more than what’s in the box. The game itself, like all action games of that era, is brutally difficult. I thought I did pretty well in stage one but the game said I was only a ‘worm master’:

The vast majority of my collection are RPGs. KLS and I purchased some of these in 1993, but I suspect others made their way into my collection as I was reviewing for Working Designs. A few have stickers on them that show I bought them used, but many games are near mint condition, obviously bought new. I recall owning (and playing) many more games than what’s in my collection right now, which means some were traded in back during that regretful period in the late 1990s. I wonder how many and which ones?

Here’s my current collection in entirety:

There’s some giants in that box, including Phantasy Star II, III and IV, the first three Shining games, Landstalker, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Shadowrun and Beyond Oasis. All of these games have aged well and are extremely playable today.

Amongst the very few items related to the Genesis that were in my database are the date of the last game purchased (Shadowrun for $20 in 1996) and the purchase of this item in early 1996 for $149:

That’s a Nomad, or portable Genesis. It was a spectacular failure for many reasons including high cost and dreadful battery life (about 2 hours on 6 AAs). Mine is in great condition as you can see, and I could easily sell it for more than I paid for it 21 years ago 🙂

Here’s a closer look at the blue boxes on the bottom of the collection photo above:

That’s my Sega-CD game collection. The Sega-CD was an add-on for the Genesis that was released in 1992. We have the second version released in 1993 that changed the form factor to sit alongside the main console. You can see it on the right in the photo at top. It was an exciting addition way back then since games on CD were very new and promised a lot. Sadly they rarely delivered, and the CD add-on was never much of a success. Mine still works, and I played a few of the games last weekend. I was pleasantly surprised by the fast access speed and short load times, especially compared to what I remember.

Some of my Sega-CD games incidentally are quite valuable. I should get around to the post about my priciest games one of these days…

I was recently watching a Youtube video and they commented the release of the above game, Fatal Labyrinth, was ‘immoral’ since the game itself is so unplayably bad. This gave me an idea, and I am seriously debating visiting this single roguelike game in detail in a future post. Interested?

The Genesis is a classic and important system in the history of home consoles, and was home to a great many absolutely fantastic games. Sadly I own few of them and because of my stubbornness about emulation will forever be deprived from playing them because I’ll not pay $750+ in any hurry for Slap Fight on the Megadrive! But I’m glad I have what I do, and will continue to keep the old Genesis safely tucked away until next time I set it up for some retro fun.

Robot Claw