The Great Japanese Retro Game Project

Some of you may have noticed, I REALLY love my video games. Not as much as Sophie of course. But a lot. And being in Japan, the spiritual home of video games, one would expect that a person such as myself would be taking advantage of all the electronic-awesomeness I can get-my-hands-on/afford. Well I would, but there's just one little problem.

It's all in Japanese.

For someone who can't order from a menu here unless it has pictures this makes buying games here almost impossible. Oh sure, there are maybe a handful of games here that are dual language, and probably whole lot out there that don't really require you to read much to enjoy them. But its never-the-less a frustrating experience to enter a video game store here knowing that you're probably just better off going home and buying english version of the game you want online. Particularly when you see a new game you've been wanting to pickup and even more so if know it won't be seeing a western release for at least the next few months.

But recently I found a solution to my current gaming dilemma.

See for some reason it's illegal in Japan to rent games (but apparently renting CD's and DVD's are fine, go figure?). So instead there is an absolutely massive market in cheap second hand video games stretching all the way back to the early 80's. Whats even better is that the patents on a lot of the old video games systems from back then have now run out resulting in stores legally being able to sell a whole slew of knock-offs that allow you to keep playing most of these ancient games.

"Fami-Clones" as they are often called, attempt to re-create the original hardware of legacy systems such as the original Nintendo and Super Nintendo (or Famicom and Super-Famicom as it's known here), and Sega's Master System and Mega-Drive (Genesis). They cost between 2,000 to 7,000 yen ($32-$115 AUD). So when I realised that it was now possible for me to purchase and play original copies of classic video games with minimal investment I became well and truly bitten by the retro games bug. As soon as I got my first full paycheck I promptly when out and bought myself a Fami-clone and a handful of of classic Nintendo and Super Nintendo games to play on it.

The great thing about old games is you don't really need to be able to read Japanese to play most of them and often they're in English anyway so it doesn't matter. Also they're REALLY cheap. Yeah, there are some super collectible rare titles that you'll need to fork over the cash for, but if your smart you'll rarely pay more than 2,000 yen for a game and often you can get some real bargains (such as Super Mario Brothers 2 for only 500-yen/$8).

Now everytime I walk into a game store here it's like Christmas and I often end up walking out with some new find tucked under my arm. Mostly I buy classic games such as Pacman or Street Fighter II, but I've also found a number of wacky Japanese games complete with hilarious Engrish that will blow your mind! So look out for future blog entries where I'll try to review some of these more unusual games. If I put my mind to it I can probably churn out at least one a week! In fact if I keep buying games at my current rate I predict that by the time I leave Japan I will have so many it will be difficult for me to ship them all home. But I'm not going to worry about that right now.

In the end I'm sure love will find a way.

An Old Dude, Some Other Guys and a Couple of Ninjas Walk Into a Village, and Say...

Japanese tv has a bit of a rep in the west for crazy, zany, fun-time wackiness, but to be honest it's mostly crap. There's really only one thing we tune in to every week - a sort of a family-entertainment period-drama called Mito Koomon. It's about an old dude (Mito Koomon) who travels around with a small band of assistants, including two samurai, a ninja, some girl who doesn't do much and a comic relief dude. But, they are disguised, so nobody can tell that they have leet crime-fighting skills. (There's another ninja, too, but he doesn't travel with the main group, more in parallel with them. He rocks up to the same village as they do, and infiltrates the local underworld scene, providing crucial behind-the-scenes support and intelligence to the main team by hanging out in dodgy bars. Also, his weapon of choice is throwing darts with pinwheels on the end, which is super awesome.)

One of the things we really like about this show is it's really easy to get the gist of the story without having to engage any language skills. Here's basically what happens every episode: Our heroes rock up in a village. They meet a friend, and go to stay at this friend's place. As it turns out, friend is currently having some problems. Some light and leisurely investigations into these problems follow, and it turns out that said problems are being caused by the local Bad Guys.
MK and co rock up chez Bad Guys and tell them to stop. Bad Guys scoff and call out a horde of guards that vastly outnumbers our heroes. Our heroes then proceed to bust caps in all asses until they get a bit bored of it. At this point, the two dudes who are secretly samurai line up on ither side of MK, and one of them produces a small black box and shouts something. At this signal, everybody - including any present friends of our heroes - immediately fall to their knees and plant their faces on the ground. In addition to this action, the Bag Guys also look like they just shat themselves.

This is a poster from Season 37. (We are watching Season 39.) At front right is Samurai A (who is in charge of the little box), then MK and Samurai B, followed by Super Kickarse Ninja. Comic Relief Dude is standing behind her. The kid and the next dude aren't in this series, so I don't know who they are. And right at the back is the Pinwheel Ninja (Pinja?).

We had to do a bit of research to really follow what was going on properly. It turns out this series - which has been running on and off since 1969 - is loosely based on apocryphal stories of a historical figure from the 17th century. Mito Koomon was the uncle of a shogun, and an ex-vice-shogun, who allegedly spent his retirement wandering the country with his loyal retainers, disguised as a crepe merchant, and rescuing nice people from naughty people.

So, the little black box they pull out at the end of each episode is apparently the proof that reveals MK's true identity, and lets the Bad Guys know that they hadn't oughta mess with his shit. It's called an 'inroo' in Japanese (or an 'inlaw' in Engrish - see Clinton's post about the capsule toys. If you look at the pic of the 'Inlaw' machine, at the bottom is a picture of MK).

Anyway, we'll probably be watching a lot less tv now, since our internet just got connected. Yay! So, watch this space for further antics and hilarity...

Gasha-Gasha!

Gasha-Gasha is Japanese for "Capsule Toy Machine". You may remember them sitting out the front of supermarkets and milkbars, where you'd put 20 cents in and get a bouncy ball, cheap plastic dinosaur or hideous looking finger puppet. Well Japan knows how to do Capsule Toy Machines right. The price ranges per toy ranges between 100 to 400 yen ($1.50-$6.00 AUD) and this mostly indicates the quality of the toy your getting. That said even at cheap end of the scale these toys go far beyond anything I used to pester my mum for whenever she did the groceries. Every anime, video-game, movie and random Japanese character has at least one type of machine dedicated to pumping out random toys associated with their likeness. Anything from keyrings, to collectible figurines, soft-toys and badges, just so long as it can fit in a plastic capsule.

With such an amazing variety and awesome quality its easy to see why capsule toys are so popular over here. From your local 7-Eleven having five or six machines out the front to the big department stores which often have entire banks of a hundred or more, the damn things are almost everywhere! There's even a thriving second hand market for them. Walk through Den-Den Town in Osaka and you'll find entire stores dedicated to buying and selling particularly rare or uncommon capsule toys. Allowing you to trade in any duplicates and complete the entire set, be prepared to pay a extra though depending on the popularity and rarity of the toy.

Below are some photo's of capsule toy related stuff I've taken over the past few weeks in Japan.




This is Mr. Hoff, no relation to David Hasselhoff, but he does do a good job of rockin' a green bowler hat while playing a key-tar. We picked this toy up in America-Mura (think kinda like China-town back home... but American-ish), and from what we can tell it's part of an Capsule Toy Art Project. Yeah thats right in Japan capsule toys are considered art, think about that...
Additionally Mr. Hoff also comes in blue and may be seen sporting an acoustic guitar or microphone.




"Do you not see this, IN LAW!"
This is awesome! Though I'm not really sure what's its all about let alone what the toy actually is. I used to like to imagine it was a cop show about a father who goes around arresting people who try to marry into his family, but recently we think it may be related to a popular Japanese TV show set in medieval Japan. We've been watching it weekly since we arrived, but I'll let Soph fill you in on the details in another post. In the mean time... "Doooooooooooooooon!"




As you can see this capsule toy machine features some of the rejected bad guys from the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, there's "Crotch-thrusting-Lizard-Man", "Sinister-Dude-in-a-red-robe", and "Klu Klux Klan Guy"... wait, what?




Finally we come to Sophie's current stash of toys with most the staples of Japanese capsule toys machines featuring here. There's some sort of guinea-pig-thing, a frog in a dress, a child mobster, Mr Hoff again, a sailor moon reject, a ninja dog dressed as a tea leaf, an annoying character from an anime, a cat girl, a Japanese weather charm, a martial-arts expert schoolboy, a baby dressed as Hello-Kitty, a padlock shaped like a bear and some purple mo-hawk dude. Key-rings shaped like donuts and Gundam figures coming soon...