Robot Claw – Page 393 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Sniper Girl

April 26, 2015

I’m a big fan of the Etrian Odyssey game series. Not only are the games fine examples of the first-person dungeon crawl genre, but they have wonderful graphics, due in no small part to the character designs of artist Yuji Himukai.

Here is his design for the female ‘sniper’ character from the first game in the series:

Therefore you can imagine my delight when Kotobukiya released this model kit:

Figure kits are rare, so I eagerly bought this one when it came out. Last week I assembled it. Here’s what was in the box:

So many colors of plastic! So much detail on the pieces! Even before I pulled the runners out of the bags I was impressed.

Very quickly it was clear this was a god-tier kit. The engineering of the pieces was superb, and almost no trimming or sanding was required. Everything snapped together tightly, but articulation of the joints was perfect. The balance was also incredible, quite an achievement considering her tiny feet!

She was very easy to put together, and on top of the ease was a lot of fun. It took me maybe 2 hours only to finish her. Although she’s on the base in these shots, she can actually stand unsupported:

There is some customization decisions to be made. She can have her goggles on or around her neck, she can hold the bow by her side or in a firing position with arrow cocked, and she can have one of four faces:

Here’s the face I chose:

She looks a little tsundere 🙂

Another shot of my finished ‘sniper girl’:

And here she is in her new home on the shelf:

This is a very impressive kit. It’s inexpensive (about $30), easy and fun to make, and she looks great. Highly recommended.

(She also has a sister kit – the ‘Imperial Girl’ – which I also bought and will make one day)

My Collection: Pokemon Mini

April 23, 2015

It’s been over a year since the last post of this type showcasing a part of my game collection, so I thought it was about time I returned to this topic. Today I’ll introduce a game system many of you have likely never heard of: Pokemon Mini!

The Pokemon Mini was released by Nintendo back in 2001. It’s one of the smallest game systems ever released that uses cartridges. All the games were Pokemon themed, simplistic and somewhat ugly due to the 96×64 LCD display (which is not backlit). The device includes a startling amount of features, such as an accelerometer, IR communication, force feedback (via an internal motor), an internal clock and battery backup. It only weighs about 50g (!!) excluding the single AAA battery used for power.

It was released in the US first, then Japan and eventually Europe, and while specific details are hard to find, it seems to have been a collossal failure. 2001 wasn’t exactly the game dark ages, so it didn’t compete too well against other devices of the time for serious gamers, and was probably a bit too niche for children, who were presumably the intended audience.

There’s a lot to like about the device. It’s smartly designed, doesn’t feel at all like a toy, and the screen is very sharp with a fast refresh rate. The speakers are tiny but the sound is good, and the controls (d-pad, 2 buttons, right trigger and shake function) all work well. I also like that the cartridges are so tiny, and that they have the name of the system written directly on the back of the PCB!

The games though… well they aren’t good. Incredible simplistic, most of them are versions of traditional parlour games (such as tangrams seen above) or sub-NES quality arcade games. The other problem was that there were only four released in the USA (including the pack-in)! There were a total of 0 games released after launch, which shows this device was pretty much DOA. I few additional games were released in Japan and Europe, but in it’s lifetime the system saw under 10 games in total.

Of course this means that my collection is complete (as far as the US version is concerned):

According to my records, I purchased the handheld and the three additional games on May 25, 2003 – about 18 months after it had been released. I pid $29.99 for the system and $9.99 for each additional game. These days it’s worth quite a bit more – especially the games. Were I to sell it on ebay I could expect to easily triple what I paid, and perhaps make even more (since listings for the games are scant).

But I won’t sell it. It’s a tiny but curious part of my collection, and happily sits in a box with the other two unusual handhelds I have… both of which I’ll feature here within the next few weeks 😉

The Impossible Dream

April 16, 2015

Adam and I were boulevarding around Sydney, or maybe elsewhere, when we came upon a strange vending machine. It was a very tall box – ten feet or so – with a small keyboard and no screen. There was a dial to the right of the keyboard that had a few settings, but none were labeled. A tiny sign had been taped on and said it would print posters of anything the purchaser wanted. It was in the lobby of some building, alongside other more mundane machines. No-one seemed interested in it; we were.

The cost was $0.75. We fed it a dollar coin. It didn’t give change.

Since there was no screen at all it was unusual to use. We put money in and typed ‘Doctor Who’. Nothing happened for a while, then it printed out a poster which came out a slot at the very bottom near the floor. The poster was massive – about the right size to hang on a door. And it was amazing. I seem to recall a montage of heroes and villans done in a woodcut style. Absolutely not what we expected. More money went in.

‘Tardis’ got us a disturbing picture of the Tardis with a screaming face carved into the front panel and a ring (like Saturn) around the light.

I typed ‘Jon Pertwee’ and got something resembling a 1960s bond poster with Pertwee in leather on his bike, babe in arms. It was amazing.

Adam printed out more Doctor Who stuff, including using the same term twice and getting two different posters that seemed to be in a series. He tried the dial, using the same term three times with the dial set differently each time. The posters were different, but we couldn’t work out what the dial did, if anything.

We then switched to fantasy monsters (dragons, beholders, demons) and collected armloads of giant, unique, incredible door posters. I vividly remember a poster depicting a dark tangled forest in astonishing detail with monsters very well hidden behind almost every tree. The poster was printed in such a way that the setting sun seemed to glow like an actual light source. We were baffled.

I inspected the posters very closely and found no copyrights or trade marks at all. The machine itself had nothing written on it. It was a complete mystery.

I forget how things ended. I don’t remember leaving; we just kept printing posters over and over. It was addictive. I wish it was real.

But it wasn’t of course. It was just the dream I had last night.