I’ve been gone for four weeks! No time for this blog. Well, I did that Hitchhiker’s pixel art. Anyway now I’m back and if you’re interested I’ll tell you what video game-related stuff I got up to over there. Then I can get working on more “hashtag content”.

First of all, I took my reliable old New 3DS. I played a few games on it that you’ll see reviews of soon; most of my time was spent on Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam Bros., which was disappointing. The Streetpass landscape was even more barren than last time, but most of the games in the plaza have exhausted their novelty to me anyway, so it’s fine.

My spouse chose to bring her Switch, and we decided to bring the dock as well for some multiplayer sessions in the evenings at our AirBnBs. This didn’t actually happen as often as I’d expected, and although I’d bought a few co-op and party games digitally not all of them were hits. The most playtime probably came out of Taiko no Tatsujin, the Switch version of which also has a fun Rhythm Heaven-esque minigame mode.

Of course we visited a few random arcades (or “game centres”), whether they be run by Taito, Namco, Sega, etc. Taiko no Tatsujin arcade is a great experience, and I had a go on Mario Kart Arcade GP DX as well. I also bought a few loose Dragon Ball Heroes cards on the cheap, and tried to play that as well only to find that in the transition to Super DBH they’d increased the team size from five to seven so I didn’t quite have enough! As always I was half-tempted to step into one of the many pachinko parlours as well to try and spot the recent Castlevania or Rockman machines, but they’re all so smoky, loud and above all seedy plus it’s really just gambling, so it didn’t seem worthwhile.

We also went to some more exciting specialist arcades in Tokyo. Natsuge Museum in Akihabara was a cool spot, tiny and crammed full of retro stuff; I had a good long session on the rare Space Harrier sequel Planet Harriers. Joypolis in Odaiba is a Sega “indoor theme park”, bringing back childhood memories of Sega World; here we had fun with several game-ified rides/attractions such as Spicy Taxi and Zombie Zoo. We also played arcade games there such as Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing and a Sonic Athletics 8-player game that I swear was made from modified Mario & Sonic at the Rio Olympics arcade machines. Anata no Warehouse was a huge game centre in Kawasaki, thoroughly and moodily themed after Hong Kong’s Kowloon walled city, but it also had loads of cool games, old and new. We played Rhythm Tengoku, Pac-Man Battle Royale, and Pop’n Music among others.

I did some game-related shopping but didn’t go overboard like last time with my stack of DS game purchases. I revisited A-too in Kyoto which has since changed hands, as well as Super Potato in Akihabara and Book-Off stores everywhere whenever I could. Since I have access to a Japanese 3DS I picked up a few particular region-exclusive games I was keen to try out, namely Gon: Bakubakubakubaku Adventure, Game Center CX 3, and Maple Story: The Girl of Destiny.

Add to that guides for Donkey Kong 64, Banjo-Kazooie, and Donkey Kong ‘94; you never know when they might contain rare artwork or comics (they didn’t, except the renders on the cover of DK64 but I’ve seen them online before). Still, the maps will surely be useful when I replay them! Volume 2 of the Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Dark Demon Realm Mission manga continues the Xeno story that’s been ongoing in DB game spinoffs since Online. And Super Mario-kun, which I’ve become much less enthusiastic about over the years but I still wanted to check out the unscanned v11, the reprinted Super Mario RPG arc in v51, and see if Pauline showed up in the Odyssey arc in v54 (she didn’t yet).

I’ll spare you a photo of the SD Blade Liger model kit (found at the same Book-Off figure floor southwest of Shinjuku station! I’m telling you, it’s a goldmine there!!), the Little Mermaid figures, and the phone charm of Kotoden‘s dolphin mascot I found since they’re not game stuff. This is the game stuff: a pack of Detective Pikachu Pokemon cards including a semi-rare(?) Mewtwo, the aforementioned DBH cards, a few Pokemon bits including a plush of my all-time fav Corsola, some Yume Nikki badges from a gachapon I found in Harajuku, a second-hand Diddy basketball figure from a Mario Sports Superstars-themed chocolate surprise egg, and several figures of SSJ4 Gohan, a transformation introduced in DBH.

All in all it was a really great trip and I did a lot of fun non-video game stuff as well! But who wants to hear about that?? Well I will quickly say that I experienced a James Turrell art installation on Naoshima, and my appreciation of it was increased thanks to my having played Bubsy 3D: BVTJTR, hehe!