Scanning and sorting.. Hajya no Fuuin

August 10, 2012 by stopXwhispering

Collecting japanese games is always a bit tricky, especially if you don’t know any japanese. Fortunately I studied it for 4 years and lived in Tokyo for a little while, hence I can read all the Hiragana and Katakana which are phonetic alphabets. The Kanji’s however are difficult, I only know a few basic ones. Most Famicom games which contain Kanji’s in the name have tiny Hiragana above the Kanjis so you will be able to pronounce it even if you don’t know that particular Kanji.

Like for example on this Altered Beast game:

I don’t know those Kanji’s but above it I can read that it says “Jyu u o u ki”, hence I can sort them game in my excel spreadsheet alphabetically, written in both roman letters and Kanji. The joy! (I’m kind of a freak when it comes to keeping things in order..)

However, one game has really pissed me off for a couple of weeks now.. namely this one:

It says Fantasy Role Playing, and then the name of the game is in Kanji, without the help of Hiragana or Katana. I was googling and searching through lists of alla ASCII Corp games and alla Kogado Studio games but couldn’t find anything!! Eventually I remembered my japanese digital dictionary that I bought to help my studies!

This thing sure is a blessing! At the bottom you can actually write a Kanji on the touchpad and it will tell you how it’s pronounced and what it means! :D So I tried to write out these Kanjis:

And after some trial and error I finally got a bit of the name and was able to google it to get the whole thing.

A few hours later I remembered something Alana had told me about Googling pictures.. I went to try it out and WOW! I just dragged and dropped the image there and it gave me the name o_O

And I could just copy past the Kanjis into a Kanji converter online which would give me the pronunciation. Why didn’t I try this out earlier?!

It sure saved me a lot of hours today though, because I’ve been scanning and sorting for three days! All my Famicom cartridges now have a picture on my computer labeled with the correct name!

I am hoping to get up a page on my blog where I can help people out by finding names of japanese games by just looking up the image of the cartridge, with big pictures of each game cartridge and name in English / Roman letters / and in japanese plus adding publisher (such as Konami or Namco etc) and what type of game it is! I will also add an extra page with games I have doubles of, in case anybody would wish to trade ^_^

Apart from this three day scanning and sorting project I have acquired a Super Mario Bros. 3 Poster that came from the Swedish Nintendo Magazine back when the game was released. It’s so pretty! :D

And my boyfriend also found my old Nintendo CarryAll case, I haven’t seen it for years! And inside along with a manual and some other stuff I found this pretty poster of the Nintendo Game Plan with ROB! :D

Parodius, Don Doko Don and more!!

May 31, 2012 by stopXwhispering

Today I got a package of Famicom games I had bought through a Swedish auction site. First of all four Famicom cartridges, Parodius Da!, Bokosuka Wars, Don Doko Don 2 and Insector X.

And also some Famicom Disk games; Gall Force, Gyruss, Arumana No Kiseki, Falsion and Kiki Kaikai: Dotou Hen with a guidebook:

I can’t wait to try them all out! :D But that will have to wait until tomorrow, since I spent this evening watching Iron Sky (a Finnish/German/American movie set in 2018 about Nazis who had been hiding on the dark side of the moon since 1945).. interesting..

I also got an early birthday present from my favorite japanese import game seller :D He had included a Hudson Turbo Controller for the Famicom ^__^ YAY! Perfect for all the shooters I have just bought :D

Hebereke (へべれけ) for Famicom

May 19, 2012 by stopXwhispering

I recently got a new batch of Famicom games I had ordered:

The games are Dig Dug, Ninja-kun: Majou no Bouken, Tetris, Ninja Crusaders, Urban Champion, Karateka, Hebereke, Tetrastar, Wits, Bubble Boobble for Famicom Disk System and Jikai Shounen Met Mag Square complete with a guide book as well ^_^

I’ve played them all a little bit but what I would like to start reviewing is Hebereke. For those of you who didn’t know, Hebereke was released under the name Uforia: The Saga in the PAL region. I tried Ebaying it today but couldn’t find either Hebereke or Uforia, but they are usually quite expensive when you see them. I got mine for about 46 USD.

I hadn’t played Hebereke, or Uforia for that matter, before. It’s a platforming game where you play as Hebe, a cute little white penguin ^_^ He’s quite useless though, he has no attacks, he can’t swim, he can’t jump very high..

He’s cute though.

Even though he can’t swim..

The enemies are also really cute:

There are in total 4 playable characters, which you unlock through gameplay:

I only made it so far to get the second character, O-chan. You have to battle them to get them by your side:

She can swim through water at least! And walk on ice!! But she doesn’t have an attack either..

The whole game is a maze, where you will have to travel back and forth to find new places you couldn’t get to earlier. You will also bump into several dead ends that you can’t pass since you don’t have the correct character yet:

On your way you will find chests.

These are crucial, since you will find items helping you along your way, like for example health potions, increasing your health from 10 to 49.

You can switch between characters anytime in the select menu:

If you’ve found the chest containing the map you can also access it here:

And the first chest you’ll probably find will contain the item generating passwords for you, so you can restart where you left off. The passwords are long and confusing, however there are unlimited continues ^_^

I made it to some giant door, but it was locked and I needed to find a key I think:

I also made it to some mines where you could ride mine carts ^_^

I also found clowns! :D That shot bubbles at me :(

And a giant boss, which I couldn’t hurt.. I guess I have to find yet another playable character first.. maybe one that can shoot!! >_<

The funniest part of this game was the birds that dropped giant turds!!

I eventually got kind of stuck, having tried every possible direction and not being able to proceed.. I will have to give it another shot some other day..

Here’s a video I put together with some gameplay, check it out, it’s really cute! ^_^

Btw, I am now also writing a bit about Famicom games for FYIG (Find Your Inner Geek), you can read it here!

Retro console photo shoot!

May 14, 2012 by stopXwhispering

Today the weather was really nice, so I decided to take some of my consoles for a little stroll ^_^

I photographed a few more, but haven’t had time to resize them yet.. tomorrow perhaps ^^

Tokorosan no Mamorumo Semerumo for Famicom

May 13, 2012 by stopXwhispering

Here’s a Famicom game called Tokorosan no Mamorumo Semerumo (所さんのまもるもせめるも). Even trying to translate that in google translate makes no sense “I also place blame also protect the” and in a Kanji converter “Mr Tokoro’s *particle Mamoru *particle *verb *particle” what?!?

Anyway, it’s a platforming game starring a guy (I guess Mr. Tokoro) who has a water pistol squirting various enemies such as cats, jumping feet and whales (?!) through different areas of Tokyo city (such as Chiyoda and Shibuya).

There is no password save feature in this game.

The gameplay is kind of fast, and the controls have a nice feeling to them.

The graphics are ok. It looks nice when you’re standing still ;D

The enemy sprites are kind of vague and blurry though.

After passing some enemies you will get to a door that takes you to the boss. It looks like some kind of aqua-guy in old-fashioned diving equipment, but he flashes at you like a camera and no matter where you are in the room you WILL get hit! If you have squirted your gun too much during the stage you will have run out of water, it’s therefore better trying to jump over enemies in the stage instead of shooting them. Save as much life and water as possible for the bosses.

When you’ve taken out the boss you’ll get to a couple of doors, it’s either 3 or 4 to choose from and I guess they take you to different locations on the map. There seems to be various ways of reaching the end:

This is what stage two looks like:

You only have one life, so if you die you are game over. However, you have continues, but they are limited! I didn’t count them but I feel like there was about 4. Which basically means that you only have 4 lives to finish the game o_O

The second boss looks exactly the same, so once again, make sure not to loose too much health during the stage and save up your water!

After several tries I got through the third stage and went into the door at the end, and it didn’t take me to a boss, instead I fell down and was supposed to land on a platform, but I didn’t have time to realize that so I fell into the whole and got game over. That’s when I gave up. I could probably have gotten further in the game, it’s just trial and error and you have to remember what to watch out for in each stage, but I just got really annoyed with it after replaying the first three stages over and over..

The music in the game was ok, but after a while it got extremely frustrating and repetitive because the game was quite hard and I kept dying >_<

Watch this video I uploaded of the gameplay and music to see what i mean:

Second batch of games from Japan

May 8, 2012 by stopXwhispering

So here’s the second batch of games I bought in Japan, a bunch of Famicom Disk games and also some more Famicom games:

Some that I’m really happy with are Star Wars, Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru, Eggerland, Castlevania II, Alien Syndrom and Hatris (which was only 100Yen =about 1.25 USD, in mint condition!!)

This weekend I tried all the games I purchased in Japan out briefly (in total 64 games and one system), and all of them worked, except for one Famicom Disk game (Breeder) which I actually think I broke myself o_O Not really sure what happened there..

Also when I got home I had a package waiting for me, with 4 reproductions I had ordered earlier ^_^

The games are reproductions of Cocoron, Recca and two Castlevania games which are fan-made in 8-bit ^_^ Can’t wait to try them all out!