Japan Pickups: Wizardry

January 12th, 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. 🙂

Ramen Universes Beyond: Pokemon

January 10th, 2024

We bought the the above in Japan, and ate it in our hotel room. It is a Pokémon cup noodle and I’d tell you the flavor if I bothered translating it. But flavour didn’t matter, since it’s got little pikachus in it!

The above shots show the noodle before and after cooking. It was light on flavour powder, but tasted fairly good and I think I’d even eat one again. The little pikachu naruto were flavorless, but a nice addition. For an inexpensive product aimed at children, this easily got a thumbs up.

Oh and what’s the red packet visible inside the container once it was opened…?

It’s a sticker! Yet another reason this is a high quality product. I wish my favourite ramen came with a sticker in every pack 🙂

In addition to the Pokémon noodle, we also found this:

Cup Nyadle is a pun, since ‘nya’ is Japanese onomatopoeia for a cats meow. This therefore is a cat-themed curry noodle! The surprise comes when you open it:

There’s a cat face under the lid! The noodle itself is just a normal curry noodle (Kristin said it was ok) so the cat face is just a gimmick but if you’re a fan of curry noodles why wouldn’t you buy this cat version?

And lastly, a brief mention of this:

It’s a cup kitsune udon, which is a type of udon that comes with a large piece of tofu. The gimmick here is that a kitsune is also a fox spirit in Japanese myth, and this particular brand advertises using a cute ‘fox girl’.

I misunderstood the note on the bottom of the lid and thought the udon contained a trading card, which is why I bought it. It didn’t 🙂

Zoffy I’m Coming Home!

January 7th, 2024

All good things end, and so too does this vacation. Today we head home.

Yesterday was a whirl of shopping – filling every available space in our suitcases. I stayed in Akihabara (which was insanely busy since it was pedestrian day) and Kristin went to a mega cosmetic shop in Harajuku. Both of us had fun, and then later in the evening we returned to Akiba to lose a bit more money not winning crane games!

What a full trip this has been! We had a somewhat loose list of things we wanted to see which we managed to complete, and then of course we added a few other things once we learned of them (wrestling, Ultraman). What we didn’t do was much resting; so we’ve saved something for when we return home.

Aside from the inevitable ‘pick up’ post once I’ve had time to recover/unpack/sort, this ends the trip report. I hope you’ve found it interesting, and in some small way been able to share the journey with us 🙂

Three Million Light Years Away In Nebula M78 Is The ‘Star Of Ultra’. This Very Day The Green Light From That Fabled Star Shone Onto Me And Made One Of My Dreams Come True!

January 6th, 2024

At the very start of this trip, we noticed a poster advertising this:

It’s an Ultraman live show. Specifically an Ultraman Blazar – the current series – show featuring the actors from the TV series. I’m not sure I’ve ever mentioned it on this blog but I’m a big fan of Ultraman so it was absolutely essential we attended.

What followed was a frenzy of translating and web searching and then use of a ‘Loppi’ machine (yes, what our cat was named after) to successfully buy tickets. Those tickets were kept very safe for two weeks until today, the day of the show!

It was at the Prism hall at Tokyo dome, right next to where we saw the wrestling show. The entire place was dressed with Ultraman posters and line management was in full effect when we arrived. Notably, we were far from the only people in line without children: it was very obvious that Ultra-fandom has no age limits!

There was a small ‘expo’ inside before we sat, including large dioramas showing various kaiju that presumably appeared in the series (I haven’t watched Blazar yet). People of all ages were very excited and I even saw a bunch of school/college girls taking photos in front of standees doing classic Ultraman poses.

There was a massive statue of this guy that will presumably appear in the upcoming Netflix film.

And a nice display of all the Ultraman model kits available so far (almost all of which I have).

We had great seats! The stage was set up with two extensions that went into the audience so virtually all seats were good, but ours were in the front row of one of the side stages! Photos were forbidden during the show, so I don’t have any photos of the main action itself but I can assure you it was amazing.

One nice feature was the optional ‘colour timer’ which is a staple of all Ultramen and shows their power level. Sold for an additional ¥2500 (a pittance for an Ultra-fan), these could be worn and responsed to the action on the stage! Usually blue, they flashed red when Ultraman was low on power and orange when he powered up. It was clever technology and very cool.

The show opened with a tribute to the original Ultraman, with him on stage defeating a kaiju with his Spacium Beam. This was quite moving to an old guy like me that has developed a strong affinity with the Showa-era series and there may have even been a salty twinkle in my eye. Then we switched to Hesei-era Ultras, and right in front of us Ultraman Zero defeated Ultraman Belial while other pairs fought at other locations on the wide stage.

The main story was about Ultraman Blazar defeating a threat from Alien Barossa and very heavily featured the original actors from the show playing their characters. I found this fascinating: imagine going to see a Star Wars show and seeing Mark Hamill or Harrison Ford, or a Marvel show and seeing Chris Hemsworth!?! Kudos to Tsuburaya for making Ultraman so accessible to the fans!

Kristin was particularly intrigued by the actor who plays the role of Ultraman Blazar’s host. That’s him pictured above, and not only was he extremely handsome but he had a powerful speaking voice and commanding stage presence! He’s a lot older than the Ultra hosts of recent years, and I look forward to how that will contribute to the series.

The bulk of the show was the action, and the fights between Blazar and the many villains were very entertaining. The kaiju were large and impressive; one of them was absolutely enormous and at first I thought there were two people in the suit. Beam and special attacks were represented via lighting and smoke and effects on a massive screen behind the actors. There was a lot of interaction with our colour timers and the music and comments from the actors kept the audience enthused throughout.

I loved it! I was mesmerized and could have sat there and watched for hours. But the best was yet to come, and didn’t occur until after ‘The End’ was on the screen.

This was when 18 Ultramen appeared on stage (see the above pic). They did a fantastic routine where they fought various villains, then they walked around and we were allowed to take photos. That’s Victory, Z, Blu, Grigio and a few others in the above pick, and as you can see Victory was directly in front of us!

Even better, before the Ultras left the hall, they left the stage and walked among the audience so the children (and not so children) could see them up close and get a fist bump. We were visited by Victory and Blu. It was pretty great 🙂

The above is the gigantic ‘towel’ I bought in the gift shop afterwards, a lovely memento of the experience.

It’s been a dream of mine for many years to be able to see a live Ultraman show and I’m so happy that not only was I able to realize it today, but that it exceeded my expectations. This is a memory that will last me for ever 🙂

The Other Two Lucky Bags

January 5th, 2024

One of the other two bags was labeled as “Candy toys, plastic models and gacha toys”. Here’s what was inside:

What a diverse selection! Firstly, none of them are technically candy toys, gacha toys, or plastic models. Secondly, some of them are extremely old: the Virtual On figure is from 2005! The top two though are nicely made large figures from recent series, and overall I can’t fault the value considering this was only ¥3000.

While none of these will return with us, right now they’re decorating our hotel room until we leave 🙂

The second bag was simply described as “THE Lucky Bag” with no hint at all as to the contents. Here’s what we got:

Now that’s a lot of trash right there: useless merch from series that no-one likes or even remembers! We were laughing as we opened this one, at how bad most of it was. Sure there’s a few diamonds in the rough (the Anya from Spy Family acrylic is cool) but when one of the better items is this shirt:

Then you know the Fukubukuro sellers saw you coming and going.

Except, in this case, for that box in the lower left of the above pic. The unopened box of ‘Dungeon Maker’ acrylics. Ten of them to be precise, that look like this:

These are amazing. Tiny acrylic miniatures for RPG games, I’ve actually purchased stuff like this in the past. They’re super detailed with cute pixel art and I wouldn’t have hesitated to buy one or two had I seen them in the wild. The lucky bag contained an entire box of ten, with a retail price of ¥6600! As far as I’m concerned this is hitting the lottery and I don’t even care that almost everything else in the bag was garbage 🙂