Category: Toys

Tokyo Three

Today we headed across town to the korean part of Tokyo where Bernard was near-overwhelmed by the multitude of K-Pop shops:

And left his mark on the local economy in a frenzied ninety minutes of shopping:

As if that weren’t enough we then – after a brief stop at the hotel to store the loot – headed over to Akihabara where I found out Gundam kits have become so big they now include handles:

That a Virtual Boy game is pushing a grand:

And that the ‘electric city’ still dazzles at night:

Bernard needed a rest so didn’t stay in Akiba too long, and I ran myself ragged looking for games and books and didn’t even enter an arcade!

No worries: we’ll return on Sunday 🙂

A Couple Of Crafts

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.

Space Crusher

I picked this up at a local con the other weekend:

It’s a Tandy/Radio Shack LCD game from 1985! “Penetrate Space City” the blurb says, fighting enemy spaceships and meteorites whilst enjoying ‘quick-action fire’ and ‘battle sound effects’.

Here’s the contents:

As you can see it’s in remarkable good condition as well as being complete in box. You’ll also note it has four-way control. What sort of game is this…?

A quick look at the manual revealed all:

It’s a Scramble clone! And – for an LCD game – a fairly sophisticated one at that. 

And yes, it still works perfectly:

The field scrolls to the left continuously and you have full control over your ship. The controls themselves are weird (Nintendo had debuted the d-pad by now so they should have ripped that off) but they are responsive and the game speed isn’t too fast.

Strangely everything is worth 2 points, and the game ends when you score 2000 (or run out of lives of course). I haven’t played it enough to see how long that would take, but my guess is easily more than one full loop.

As a kid I would have loved this game. As an adult I love the purity of it. A real gem of a find at a local con 🙂