For most of December we took a trip over to Japan again, so I thought I’d share some gaming-related tidbits from my time there.
Having been a few times now, I thought I knew what to expect. Of course I packed my 3DS, hoping for tens of Streetpasses per day. Oops! Turns out the 3DS is on the wane in Japan. Even passing through busy train stations or going to theme parks didn’t fill my queue as it had in years gone by. I still got a lot more than you get in Australia, but compared to the overflowing abundance of previous trips, it seems the age of Streetpass has… passed.
The arcade of course, lives on as it has. We visited a few over the course of the trip, but I can’t say I noticed much new and exciting. The hot new Dissidia game that was very fresh two years ago is still around and widespread, and a PS4 port is coming soon. A new game in a similar style with gunslingers or something seemed popular. Taiko no Tatsujin is still a staple, and we had some fun with the latest selection of songs. We also played Mario Kart Arcade GP DX again, it being my wife’s favourite iteration of Mario Kart and I don’t disagree, the immersion of the full steering wheel experience makes it fun. I also had a go with the classic shmup Ikaruga at a retro multi-cabinet in a Taito arcade; later in the massive Round One Stadium, while my companions played the Tsum Tsum arcade game (just like the mobile game but bigger, and with prizes) I had a second try at Mario & Sonic at the Rio Olympics, where I had a surprisingly good time as Blaze with the very physical control scheme.
As an aside, a funny thing I noticed: at the fantastic Osaka Museum of Ethnology, converted PSPs were used as audio guide devices. Meanwhile, at Osaka’s Kaiyukan Aquarium, DSs could be rented for the same purpose.
Anyway of course I did a lot of shopping. A couple of photos if you’ll indulge me showing off my “haul”. The first is video game-related goods that I picked up along the way. Some stickers for my laptop, some Pokemon gachapon figures, some random Dragonball Heroes cards (not to use, just to look at). That figure that Ditto is cradling is the female Saiyan Avatar from said game, a lucky gachapon draw. Having been impressed and inspired by the Ecco games this year, I also sought out some dolphin-related figures and toys, and I’m claiming them as “game merch”. Ape’s DKC2 guide (I was hoping for some unique illustrations or content but it’s mostly just maps), some Corocoro Layton and Super Mario-kun manga. The most fun and exciting bits of course are the DKC manga volume (which looks great, and combines elements of the animated series and DK64, very fun book, I already had scans of it here but a nice thing to collect); and the heart-stopping, excellent Figuarts Rockman Zero figure, which goes to show that it’s always worth checking the figure floor of the Book-Off southwest of Shinjuku station. It’s also where I got the Lupin Lambda robot two years ago after all.
As for games themselves, Japan is of course a great place for exclusives and retro game collection. This time I focused a lot on the DS, which I’ve decided for now is my all-time favourite console, or at least now is a good time to collect for it. Hopefully you can make everything out in the photo but the ones I was most excited for were Illustlogic (a Picross clone, stylus control yay!), the Umihara Kawase games, Zoids Saga DS (good GBA memories), and WarioWare Twisted which is of course impossible to emulate due to its gyroscopic controls. I was also glad to find Dragonball Ultimate Butoden and Maple Story DS, and they represent how some of these I found in the first Book-Off I looked in at Gotanda, but some eluded me until my very last out-of-the-way opportunity (Hanazono Super Potato).