20 Japan-only Famicom Releases that I Kind of Like

I have a lot of Famicom games.  Living in Japan I have never noticed much distinction between the ones which were released only in Japan and the ones which were released everywhere - I`ve pretty much had equal access to all of them since I first got into the Famicom about 5 years ago.

Nonetheless I figured it would be cool to do a post about some of the Japan-only releases that I like.  I`ve chosen 20 of them to highlight in this post.  I thought I would do a `Top 20!` list or something but abandoned the idea.  It is too hard to rank them and there are so many worthy ones that making a list of only 20 is going to leave a lot of deserving ones out.  So this is basically just a list of 20 Japan-only Famicom games in my collection which I kind of like.  Some of them are actually total crap games like Transformers Mystery of Comvoy which I nonetheless like for its awfulness.  Others are actually really fantastic games to play, like Crisis Force.

In terms of numbers, most of the Japan-only releases are games that are probably of limited interest overseas - Pachinko, Mahjong and RPG games.  I have avoided these in this list and focused on games that were playable without Japanese language and which have something - be it good game play or some bizarre feature - that I thought made them interesting.  Generally I`ve also ignored the super-expensive rare stuff and focused on games that can be found cheap (Crisis Force is about the only game on here that goes for more than $15 or so loose, most of them are way cheaper than that).

Anyway, here they are, in no particular order.

Gorby No Pipeline

This is one of those games that is awesome on two levels.  First, it is a pretty good puzzle game.  In a Tetris/Dr. Mario -ish type of way, pieces of pipe fall from the top of the screen and you have to arrange them so as to make a pipeline pumping water from one side to the other.  Its fun, though it would have benefited from a multiplayer option.  The second way it is awesome is the ....everything else about it.  It is a game named after a Soviet Premier and featuring him prominently on the cover art, birth mark and all.  Enough said.  Awesome game.

Banana

This is one of those games which I cannot understand why it was never released on the NES.  It is a kind of Boulder Dash type game in which you dig through dirt in order to collect various things and make it to the end of the screen.  As it is a puzzle game you have to do things in correct order, otherwise you end up trapped.  I like this way more than Boulder Dash though, its just a lot more fun.  The sound effects are really great too.

Binary Land

This is another game that should have been released for the NES but for whatever reason was not.  It is actually one of my favorite games and I keep a copy near my Famicom at all times.  You have to simultaneously control two penguins as they move through a maze and arrange it so that they meet at one point at the exact same time.  It is kind of aunique way of structuring a game and it works.

Armadillo

This game rocks.  It is a really good platformer, you control an armadillo.  He can curl up into a ball and hurl himself around, which makes for a very unique attempting-to-control-a-game-character experience.   I don't know why this wasn't released on the NES.

Bird Week

I wouldn`t say that this is a really fun game to play, but I thought it deserved mention because it is both cute and unusual.  You play a bird who has to feed her young.  The birds are cute.  It is kind of neat.  Therefore I like it!

Bomber King

Bomber King is kind of an overlooked game.  If I had to describe it simply, I would say "Bomberman, but not as good."  Actually that kind of sums it up sufficiently.  Not as good as Bomberman, but sometimes I like to play it.

Crisis Force

Crisis Force is a really good shoot em up.  The graphics are impressive, almost what you would except from a Super Famicom game.  Unfortunately it is a hard one to come by since it was released relatively late in the console's life and didn't become a huge hit. 

Devil World

 Technically this isn't a Japan only release since I think it was sold in Europe, but it never made it to the NES in North America so I'm including it anyway.  It has a lot of religious stuff in it, but not in a preachy way.  Its basically a maze like game that looks a bit like Pac Man but has some unique features (notably the need to avoid getting squished against the edge of the screen as the wall moves) which distinguish it.

Dough Boy

 This is not a fun game to play.  Whenever somebody compiles a "Worst Famicom Games" list, this is on it.  I think this criticism is somewhat overstated.  To be sure, it sucks, but once you get used to it....it sucks a bit less.

Flying Hero

Returning to games that are actually fun to play, we have Flying Hero.   I like this game a lot.  You control some firefighters carrying a tarp who have to catch (or bounce) stuff falling out of the windows of a burning building.  The game play feels a lot like Arkanoid actually, but the look is completely different.  You put out the fire by bouncing stuff into the burning windows, which doesn't make much sense but I like that.

Front Line

 And back to games with a bad reputation.  I actually like Front Line.  You are an infantryman and basically you have to shoot the enemy while running across the screen towards their base.  Thematically it is similar to Dough Boy, but this is a much better game.

Ganbare Goemon

 I play this game, and the sequel, a lot with my wife.  She had it as a kid and is much better than me.  It is an adventure game and is the only game on this list which requires a bit of Japanese to complete.  It has a really good cooperative mode, which most Famicom games lack.

Hello Kitty World

There are a lot of Hello Kitty themed games for the Famicom, but this is the only one I like.  It is conceptutally a bit like Balloon Fight. Kitty Chan is suspended by balloons and you have  to avoid having her (his?) balloons popped.  It is simple and actually not bad to play.

Hi no Tori

This game I play more often than any game on this list except for Binary Land.  It is an awesome platformer.  You play Gaou, who basically does a bunch of platformer stuff as he moves in an exciting way from the left of the screen to the right of the screen.  The most innovative feature is that Gaou can vomit up these concrete blocks which he can use to make stairs to climb over stuff.  Its really neat.

I also like this game for the mood it creates.  Somehow with the limited 8 bit graphics and sound they do a good job of giving it an ancient Japan feeling.  

Joy Mecha Fight

This is a neat game.  You control a very unique looking character who bascially engages in one-on-one fights Street Fighter style as he advances.  I haven't played this game enough to actually become good at it, I always use the easy level and never get far.  I like it though.  

King Kong 2

 There was no King Kong 1 video game, this is actually from the movie King Kong 2, released in 1986 (the game's cover art comes straight from the movie poster).  You control King Kong as he fights screen to screen in an attempt to ultimately rescue his girlfriend.  Its a somewhat enjoyable action game, I haven't seen the movie but apparently it strays from the script quite a bit!

Route 16 Turbo

 This is a fun game that I play a lot.  It is a maze game in which you control a car that has to navigate various mazes in order to collect items while avoiding being hit by enemy cars that are chasing you.  I'm not sure why it was never released overseas, but it may have something to do with the fact that the walls on one of the mazes are noticably arranged to look like swastikas (which in Japan are a fairly common sight since they are an ancient symbol used to denote Buddhist temples on maps).

Sekima II

 This game is awesome mainly because it is based on an 80s Japanese heavy metal band who come from another dimension and use heavy metal music to propogate satan.  That is not the story of the game - that is the story of the actual band this game is based on.  Which is totally awesome!!

Transformers Mystery of Comvoy

Suckiest game ever.  But I like it.  I was in Osaka last year and my wife and I started playing this game at a retro game shop and that was the moment I realized that sucky games can be fun too.

Yume Penguin Monogatari

This must be the most well-known Japan only release on the Famicom.  Its a really good platformer based exclusively on not eating food that is constantly being thrown at you.  It is relatively easy to finish, as evidence by the fact that a guy as bad at video games as myself has actually completed it.

Star Wars

The Namco Star Wars game on the Famicom is pretty awesome.  It is a very fun platformer and it has that weird place in Star Wars nerd-dom too since it completely messes up the storyline from the film and introduces all sorts of oddities (Darth Vader turning into a scorpion, a level populated by frogs, etc).

Takeshi's Challenge

How could I not include this game?  Worst game of all time or act of sheer genius?  Hard to tell, but this is a must have game.

Mandarake Finds: Kousenjuu SP Gun and Old Japanese Star Wars Stuff

I had a nice stop in at Mandarake this afternoon, replete with purchases. Nothing makes for a nicer day than finding a few bargains. The best part was the Kousenjuu SP Light Gun, complete in its original box!
This is a light gun made by Nintendo in 1970 as the package shows:
About a year ago I found a Kousenjuu SP Electro Safari , which is basically a big target for these light guns:
You just aim the gun at the little light detector on the leopard and if you hit it, the leopard spins around. I never had a gun to test it out with though so I was psyched to find this.

Actually, I still don`t have one. This one doesn`t work, which is kind of too bad. On the other hand though I got it quite cheap and really just wanted it to look at rather than to use so I think it was a cool purchase.

Open the box up and here you go:
It even came with some pretty ancient looking Toshiba batteries.

Anyway, I love the box art:
And check out the pearl handles, John Wayne style:
It is actually quite similar to the original Famicom Light Gun:Not quite the same though, they definetely used different molds for them.

I picked up a couple of other cool, albeit non-gaming related, things while there. First, this thing, which is awesome:
A partial set of Japanese 1977 Yamakatsu / Topps Star Wars cards. I LOVE original old school Star Wars stuff like this, and I especially love finding Japanese old school Star Wars stuff. This is a little booklet and inside are a bunch of envelopes, each containing one card. A couple have been removed but most are still in there. You can`t see what cards are in the envelopes so I`m not sure which ones I got. These things are insanely rare to find still unopened like this so I`m going to keep it as is for the time being.
I also picked up a copy of the Japanese version of Starlog from 1983. The Return of the Jedi preview issue, complete with a back cover poster ad for the upcoming release:
All in all a great day. Check out Erik`s post here on Before Mario for a bit more info on this old Nintendo light gun. His is in a bit better condition than mine and probably works too!

Related Posts:
- Flea Market Finds: Nintendo Batting Practice with Koichi Tabuchi and Sadaharu Oh
- Nintendo Color TV Game 15
- Mega Bargain of the Day Kousenjuu SP Electro Safari

80s Nostalgia and the Appeal of Retro Gaming

One of those existential questions that plague retro video gamers is the degree to which nostialgic memories of their childhood may be clouding their judgment on the merits of retro gaming. Pretty much every retro game forum out there probably has at least a couple of threads devoted to this topic and it is always rearing its head in arguments between fans of modern and classic games.

Its a tough question to answer. A lot of people seem reluctant to admit that nostalgia plays a huge role in their attraction and insist on enumerating a long list of objective reasons why retro games are better than current generation ones. I know I do this all the time. On the one hand there really are a lot of objective reasons to like retro games better than modern ones. On the other though it is hard to deny that nostalgia plays a big part. In my case I would go so far as to say it is the main reason I prefer retro games and in particular retro games from the 80s.
I really notice the effects of this in my reluctance to fully embrace consoles made after the late 80s. The PC Engine and Mega Drive are about my cut off point. While I can enjoy consoles made after those ones and really love my N64 and Super Famicom, they just don`t elicit the same response in me that earlier consoles do. This is clearly visible in the content of this blog. Note the excitement when I bought my Intellivision or Epoch Cassette Vision, two consoles that I didn`t even have any games for but which happen to have been produced in the early 80s. Contrast that with the fact that every time I go into my local game shop I pass by stacks of Sega Saturns, a console I do not own, that are selling for dirt cheap along with tons of software for them. These just don`t interest me anywhere near as much as the consoles that existed in the 80s did and I attribute this fact almost 100% to the fact that its only the stuff that was around when I was a kid that moves my heart.
For me, retro gaming pretty much ends at about 1990 when I started high school. Of course I also like consoles made after that, but for me the 80s are where it is at. When I play my Famicom I am transported back in time to a world of colorful Swiss Swatches:
Members Only Jackets (that green one there is mine, god how I miss it. Note also the calculator watch on my wrist, the tube socks on the guy behind me and....dam, everything in this photo is good):
Star Wars Toys:
G.I. Joes:
Gobots:
And of course Natalie from the Facts of Life:
So there you go. To all you modern gaming fans out there I concede the point: I like retro games mainly for nostalgia.

Related Posts:
-Emulation Schmemulation: 5 Reasons You Should Own an Old Console
- 80s Girls and the Famicom: Miho Nakayama`s Tokimeki High School Idol Hotline

Breaking News: Mandarake Has Moved!!! And I Got Stuff There!

Last week my wife and I were downtown and dropped by Mandarake in Tenjin. As I noted last year in my review of the store here, Mandarake is without a doubt the best retro game (and toy) store in all of Fukuoka.

I feel like I'm in a little dreamland when I go there it is so good. Omocha Souko, our local retro game store out here in the suburbs kind of sucks in comparison. I get amazing deals at Omocha Souko from time to time, but they very rarely get any good stuff in. 95% of their stock is fake retro stuff (all these commemorative edition things that have been mass produced in recent years). Mandarake on the other hand is always full of amazing retro stuff. Its almost like going to a museum, you can just gawk at it. You won't get any insane steals like you might find at Omocha Souko on occasion (if I don't beat you to it), but they have fair prices on everything and a really great selection. Their staff are really nice too (Omocha Souko's can be a bit gruff at times).

Anyway, like I was saying, last week we were downtown and dropped by Mandarake. Much to our dismay though it was permanently closed!! They were actually hauling away boxes of merchandise as we arrived:
Thankfully we discovered on talking to the guy carrying the boxes in the above photo that they hadn't gone out of business but were just moving to a new location with more floor space than their current one. The grand opening of the new place would be on April 29th.

I knew I just had to be there.

The new place is in Daimyo, about a 20 minute walk away from their old one. The old one was in a 4 floor building that was extremely cramped. Whenever I'd go I would always end up bumping into people in the aisles, especially if I had a back pack on. The new one is only 2 floors, but they really do have a lot more space in there, so no more bumping into people.

They had a ton of female staff members dressed up in cosplay outfits for the grand opening welcoming customers at the doorway:
Unfortunately they don't allow photography in there so I couldn't get any pics of the inside. In a nutshell, its really big and really full of awesome old retro toys, comics and games. I kind of preferred the look of the old one actually, it had a darker, more cramped feel to it that somehow created a cool vibe to the place. The new one is more spacious and much, much brighter. Everything is bathed in florescent lighting. So I give them a thumbs up for the increased aisle width, but a bit of a thumbs down on the new decor.

The new space must have allowed them to display a lot more than the old place, as they had some new stuff I'd never seen before. The had an Intellivision system CIB that looked fantastic (you can see a pic of it on their website here).

I have to admit that I went on a bit of a shopping spree there. I didn't buy any Famicom stuff though, as they didn't have much new in that department.

I did find these babies though:
Yeah! Vintage Star Wars Action figures!! Whoo hoo! OK, they are all minor characters and all from Return of the Jedi, but they still count! And were they ever cheap!!

I'm not a huge fan of sealed stuff so these things are vexing me. I have previously on here slammed the practice of keeping stuff - and specifically Star Wars action figures - sealed, but there I had more in mind these new toys that are made for collectors rather than kids.

These ones on the other hand are actually vintage and sealed ones are hard to find. But I really want to open them up and play with them. Oh I just don't know what to do....
Anyway, these are only some of the things I bought. I might put pics of the other, amazingly awesome, stuff I bought in the days to come....

Related Posts:
- Fukuoka Famicom Shops 1: 007
- Fukuoka Famicom Shops 2: The Decline and Fall of the Famicom Empire
- Fukuoka Famicom Shops 3: Mandarake
- Fukuoka Famicom Shops 4: Flea Markets Brought to you by the God of War
- Fukuoka Famicom Shops 5: Don Quixote and Village Vanguard

Star Wars and the Famicom: A Tale of Two Games

As astute readers are undoubtedly already aware, the Famicom was first released in Japan in 1983. In that same year, half a world away in the picturesque village of Dunrobin in eastern Ontario, a 7 year old kid was anxiously awaiting the release of the mega-film event of the year: the Return of the Jedi.

At that early stage in my development, Star Wars had been an all-encompassing presence in my life for about two years. In 1981 for my 5^th birthday my heroic dad had gone and somehow gotten his hands on a VCR (a pretty rare item back then) and a copy of Star Wars. I had about half a dozen of my kindergarten classmates over for my party and it was decidedly THE event of the Dunrobin social calendar among 5 year old boys that year. I remember sitting on the shag-carpeting of our rec-room floor, watching in eager anticipation as my dad tried to figure out how to hook up the wires to our TV, which was one of those big types in a wood frame designed to be a piece of furniture in its own right. Of the lot of us, only one had ever seen Star Wars before and he assured us, as the film was about to begin, that it was the greatest thing. Ever.

It turned out that my 5 year old classmate, whose name is now lost to the ages, would probably be the only person in my life to ever offer such high praise for a film and subsequently be proven correct when I watched it. We were all blown away. Bouncing off the walls. It was insanely awesome. From the moment “Star Wars” flashed on the screen we were hooked. The Star Destroyer passing overhead, blasting away at the little rebel ship. The camera pauses on an older looking rebel trooper with his gun poised, waiting for the impending assault. The hero of the film? Nope, he is one of the first to die when the stormtroopers blast their way in. Wow. My life would never be the same again. A few weeks later my parents took me to a repeat screening of the Empire Strikes Back at a theatre in the big city of Ottawa. The silver screen experience that time.

Two words: AT ATs.

My fragile mind was blown away. Within a year my room was overflowing with massive quantities of Star Wars merchandise - the interior decorating choice of pre-pubescent males with discerning taste in the early 1980s.

Anyway, enough with the historical background and back to that Famicom-getting-released-in-1983 thing. I find it interesting that Return of the Jedi was released in the same year as the Famicom and yet in the entire 11 year life span of that amazing console they never got around to making a Return of the Jedi game for it. Actually it took them about 4 years to even get the first Star Wars game out and they barely squeezed in an Empire Strikes Back game in the console’s 9^th year.

I own 2 of the 3 Star Wars games made for the Famicom. One is the 1987 Namcot Star Wars, released in Japan only and the other is the Empire Strikes Back game released by Victor in 1992. Victor also released a version of Star Wars, which I don’t have (but really want).

Of the two games that I do own, there is a striking difference in style between them which is what I kind of want to talk about in this post. I really like both games, but in terms of Star Wars nostalgia value they are worlds apart. I hate to pick favorites among my Famicom games (you never know, they might have some sort of hidden innate intelligence and it might hurt the feelings of the ones that get shunned). Still though, the Namcot Star Wars blows the Victor Empire Strikes Back away. Let me explain why.

I preface my explanation with a question. What is the best Star Wars film to be released post-1983?

If your answer included anything made by George Lucas, you are wrong. The correct answer is the mind-blowingly fantastic review of Episode 1 by Mr. Plinkett of RedLetterMedia. If you haven’t seen it yet, then watch and learn. He succeeds where no sci-fi geek has ever succeeded before: tearing apart the minutia of a sci-fi film in a way that is both entertaining and hilarious. I think I’ve watched it 3 or 4 times. It is that good.

OK, this praise is getting unseemly so let me qualify it with a point of disagreement with Mr. Plinkett. He says that the moment at which Star Wars was ruined forever occurred during Episode 1. In other words, it happened in 1999, the year of that film's release. That is incorrect. It happened a few years earlier – 1992 to be exact. Coincidentally, the year the Empire Strikes Back game was released on the Famicom.

In 1992 I was in high school. My childhood obsession with Star Wars was by then a faint memory as throughout the mid to late 80s my interests had naturally moved on to other things. The seeds for a nostalgic revival of my interest were there though. I happened to be in a book store sometime that year when I saw a Star Wars book. This piqued my interest. The Star Wars merchandising machine had dried up sometime in the late 80s and for a few years the store shelves had been completely empty of Star Wars stuff. I took a look at it. Some guy named Timothy Zahn had written a sequel trilogy to Star Wars. Wow. I had to have it.

I read that trilogy with a great deal of enthusiasm sometime in 1993. It was a big let down. Zahn seemed to be a reasonably capable writer, but it was also blatantly obvious that his license to write the books had some sort of provision that read “You may NOT kill off any of the established characters from the films in your books.” Of course the books centred mainly around putting the established characters from the films into dangerous situations. Once you realized that nothing would ever happen to any of them, the whole thing just became boring.

Unfortunately that trilogy led to a revival of interest in Star Wars that spawned a whole shitload of other insanely boring Star Wars books and merchandise which eventually led to the god-awful prequels being made. So I say that 1992 is the year that Star Wars officially began to suck, not 1999. It’s a relatively minor point, but one that is relevant to my two Star Wars Famicom games.

One side effect of the explosion of Star Wars crap that occurred in the 1990s was that Star Wars fans started to become extraordinarily anal retentive about this thing called “canon”. I think this may have been the result of an unhealthy influence of Star Trek fans on Star Wars but I’m not sure. At any rate, suddenly every Star Wars related work that was produced had to fit exactly into this established story line and anything that didn’t was by definition bad. This was like putting a huge ball and chain on the creative process of anyone writing about Star Wars and this is reflected in the shit quality of a lot of the crap that has been produced in the past 18 years – prequels most definitely included.

Now compare my two Famicom Star Wars games – one made in 1987 and the other in 1992. The 1992 Empire Strikes Back game is usually praised for being a faithful reproduction of the film. They stick more or less to the storyline and don’t make any radical changes or anything. And I should stress that it is a good game – but it needs to be said that it is a good game not because it sticks closely to the original movie but despite the fact that it sticks closely to the original. Its just a fun game to play.

The 1987 Namcot game is another story – it belongs to an era before anal retentiveness overtook the whole Star Wars universe. The makers of that game clearly had no concept of “canon” in mind when they made that game. The storyline is only tenuously connected to the original film and they throw all sorts of random stuff into there – a world of frogs, Darth Vader turning into a giant scorpion, Luke slaying Jawas with his light sabre, etc – that have nothing to do with the film.

I find it surprising that some people actually criticize the game for this: to my mind this makes it a much better game. In fact I would go so far as to say this is one of the best Star Wars video games ever, at least from a creative point of view. Playing the Empire Strikes Back I basically know what the next level is because its whatever would be next in the film. Which, I guess, is fine. Playing Star Wars though you don’t know what is coming next. What are these? Frogs? I’m on Kessel? That wasn’t in the film. Wait, why did Darth Vader turn into a scorpion? Screw it, this is cool.

The closest cousin to the Namcot Star Wars game I can think of are the Marvel Star Wars comics from the late 70s/ early 80s. I used to read those when I was a kid. They were awesome. They probably had the same licensing deal that Timothy Zahn later got (don’t kill off any main characters) but they got around it by just making up a crapload of random characters to shove in there – I remember a green, humanoid rabbit for some reason – and most of the issues I remember barely featured the main film characters at all. Probably I’m viewing this through rose-tinted lenses, but I remember those comics being really creative and fun to read - something the 1990s books were definitely not.

Anyway, that is my view of Star Wars through the prism of two Famicom games (or vice versa I should say). I should stress that I don’t think everything about post-1992 Star Wars is bad. Some of the video games have been great – I play Episode 1 pod racer on the N64 all the time. But they are great despite the fact that they are connected to the current Star Wars marketing machine, not because of it.