Category: Retro

Lunatics Only: Handhelds

June 10, 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.

Japan Pickups: Gamebooks

January 16, 2024

As always I was on the hunt for books for my gamebook collection during the recent trip, and I’ve become better at finding them in the various collectors and used book shops I visit. I bought some interesting items this trip!

The above are the standard gamebook finds. Only one original Fighting Fantasy book is fewer than the last few times I was in Japan, but my collection of Japanese versions is becoming quite complete now and it’s not easy finding ones I don’t already have!

The middle book is the Japanese imprint of volume one of Cretan Chronicles and the rightmost is the Japanese version of the Maelstrom RPG written by a gamebook author and released to the same market in the 1980s.

To my great surprise – and happiness – I also found a brand new copy of the first box set of FF reprints from 2020. As I understand this was only available via a Japanese crowdfunding campaign and I assumed I’d never get a set. Now I have one! I already owned the second and third box sets, and the fourth is out in a few months. I’ll look for that one on future trips 🙂

Amazingly, after my great surprise finding a single issue back in June, I found thirty-one issues of Japanese Warlock magazine. This was not an impulse buy – both weight and cost were considerable – and I deliberated for a few days. Lunacy won out though, and they’re now in my house!

I now have about half of the 63-issue run of this magazine. This is a collection that merits more attention, and I’ll probably feature it in a future blog post one day.

The above were a surprise since I didn’t even know they existed. They’re AD&D modules based on FF books! Eight were printed in english (and they’re quite expensive now!) but the numbering on these Japanese ones (the above are 1, 6 and 7) don’t match the english versions and it’s hard to find information about them online.

They’re impressively designed with lots of nice art, and they make me want to try and get one of the English versions….

The last – and by far weirdest – item I found was this gamebook based on the 1980s horror film House. As you can see it was called Goblin in Japan, probably because there was a famous Japanese fantasy-horror film called House already.

This book is super strange. I though the Back To The Future gamebook I bought on a previous trip was weird but of all the films to based a book on why on earth was this one chosen?

It seems like a fully featured book with hundreds of entries, but it’s also very puzzle heavy, possibly in lieu of a normal combat system. Art is stills from the film. I’ve seen the film somewhat recently so I may have to get the translator and give this one a play through just to try and understand what the story could be?

Incidentally the publisher is the same that released the video game licensed gamebooks in Japan, including the two Wizardry ones I showed in the last post. And yet this is from a different series. As you can see it’s number 4 in the series. What were the others? Unfortunately finding info online about these is almost impossible, so for now I can only wonder.

Japan Pickups: Wizardry

January 12, 2024

My Wizardry game collection ever-increases, and with the acquisition of the above three on this recent trip there’s now only two games in the series I don’t own. While neither seem especially rare or expensive, the fact remains I’ve never seen a copy of either in years of looking so the search continues!

I was very happy to find the above on this recent trip: a beautiful boxed copy of Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord for the MSX2! Note that the original (1987) price was 9800 Yen – about $65 – which was about two or three times more expensive than a computer game cost in the west in those days.

The game is on a cartridge, and from what I read only works on expanded versions of Japanese MSX computers. I daresay there’s not many of them left working, so there’s no question I’ll ever be able to play this. The box contains all sorts of goodies, but notably the miniature metal dragon statue that was originally included is missing.

The above are three hints guides for various Wizardry games. I found these in Osaka which was good because at about $15 each they were considerably less expensive than they would have been in Tokyo.

As with others I’ve previously shown here, the guides are beautiful books, packed with art and maps and lots of colour. It’s clear the authors of these books loved the games!

This small hardcover book is an oddity! Titled Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Wizardry it seems to be a sort of lore book of items and equipment from the first six games. Almost every entry also features a nice piece of line art. It seems to have very limited (if any) use as an actual game guide, but could perhaps serve as a RPG manual of sorts. While I love it, it’s hard to see why this was even published!

Speaking of RPG manuals, the above was an exciting pickup for me: it’s the monster manual for the original Wizardry RPG from the 1980s. It’s a small-sized paperback with a lovely cover by Jun Suemi, and I dearly wish I could read it since the machine-translations suggest it’s very lore-heavy on the monsters from the games.

As you know I also collect gamebooks, so I was extremely happy to find the above two for sale. Both are from the Futabasha Famicom Gamebook Series and are based on the first and third Wizardry games.

These are very traditional one-player gamebooks in the Fighting Fantasy mold featuring manga-style art and what appears to be a complex system based on the size of the adventure sheet! There’s almost 80 (!) books in this gamebook series including two other Wizardry ones; I wonder if I’ll ever find them?

Lets end with a story about ‘one that got away’. The above pic was taken in Osaka a few weeks ago, and shows me holding one of my holy grails: one of the two Jun Suemi Wizardry artbooks. This is the older and more expensive of the two, and the sticker price on this used book was about $170.

Normally I would have thrown my money at the cashier but I had already bought the book on Amazon a month earlier. The amazon order – coming from Japan – was to arrive while we were away but never did. A followup with the seller led to a refund, and no book. So I held one of my grails in my hand and didn’t buy it, and still don’t own it. 🙂

Robot Claw