Robot Claw – Page 94 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

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. 🙂

Ramen Universes Beyond: Pokemon

January 10, 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 🙂