The Last Famicom Game: Adventure Island 4

This week I scratched another game off my Famicom want list - Takahashi Meijin's Adventure Island 4!

It was released 24 years ago this month (June 24, 1994) which gives it a distinguished place in history as the last game ever released for the Famicom.  This also makes it one of the hardest to find since it simultaneously falls into several categories that make it a high-demand item:

1. Late release with very limited sales/production making it a rarity
2. Game featuring a popular character
3. Game never released outside of Japan
4. Game generally well regarded as a game

I have wanted a copy of this since the earliest days of my collection.  Its every Famicom collector's white whale since the existence of the other Adventure Island games (all of which are much easier to find and cheaper) in your collection constantly remind you of its absence.  Its something about the numbering that plays on whatever elements of an obsessive compulsive personality lurk in your psyche - 1, 2,3.....where is 4?  Its an itch I need to scratch!!!

So I am relieved to have this in the collection now, though once again I find myself regretting not having purchased it a few years ago when I had the chance.  I distinctly remember holding my finger above a Yahoo Auctions BIN button for a nice loose copy at a price of 8200 Yen about five years ago and for whatever reason (hubris?  arrogance?  sheer stupidity?) holding fire in the mistaken belief that a cheaper one would magically appear.  I paid just under 14,000 Yen for this one and counted myself lucky.

Stuff you Might Find in a Lot of Games Bought Off Yahoo Auctions: An Autographed Copy of Takahashi Meijin Bouken Shima!

I bought a lot of about 70 Famicom carts off of Yahoo Auctions a few days ago and they arrived in the mail last night.  Sometimes lots of games that you buy there will turn up unexpected treasures like a copy of Battletoads or Gimmick, especially when it is someone who doesn`t necessarily know much about games and is just selling off a big pile of them which they found in a closet or something.

This lot turned up a little treasure of its own which I have never seen in a lot like this before.  A copy of Takahashi Meijin Bouken Shima (Adventure Island) autographed by Takahashi Meijin himself!

I`m not an autograph expert, but I looked around Google and this does indeed look like his autograph.  Its possible that it is a forgery, but a few things suggest it is real.  The first is that if you were going to forge his autograph you probably wouldn`t choose this cart, which is fairly beat up.  The second is that the seller didn`t even mention there was an autographed cart in the lot, and this cart wasn`t even in the main thumbnail photo on the listing, which you would expect someone trying to rip people off to do.  And, like I said, it looks like his autograph. 

Anyway, assuming its real I think this is a pretty amazing addition to my collection.  Takahashi Meijin is probably the most well-known face associated with the Famicom from its heyday in the 1980s.  There are of course a lot of Nintendo people (Takahashi worked for Hudson) who were more important, but as recognizable personalities they have a lot less recognition than Takahashi, whose face was plastered all over advertisements, was featured in five games (not including the SFC and Gameboy ones) and even had his own TV show.  Probably Arino from Game Centre CX is the only person to give him a run for his money as the most recognized Famicom personality in Japan, but he only became in that regard years after the Famicom`s peak popularity.

Actually now that I have this I am wondering how easy it would be to meet the man and maybe get him to sign a copy of Takahashi Meijin Bouken Shima II.  I love that pink cart and it would look amazing with an autograph on it.

Breaking Famicom News: Lost Love and A Fake Famicom Cart? The Gold Binary Land Scandal.

The Japanese language internet has been abuzz over the past few days with speculation about the origins of the gold Binary Land Famicom cart, seen in the above photo selling for 84,800 yen (almost $1,000) at Super Potato in Osaka.  I figured that since nobody seems to have picked up on this bit of gossip in English I would do the honors here.

I`m getting my information on this from the excellent Famicom no Netta blog, which did a post on the scandal here.  By way of background, there is a very romantic story about the origins of Binary Land, which is fitting given the romantic theme of the game (which, I have to add, is a really fun one to play).  The game was developed by two employees of Hudson Soft, known as Kiku and Megu.   If you turn the game on and, while the title screen is showing press down on the A and B buttons on both controllers and press reset, a hidden message saying KIKU MEGU LOVE STORY! will appear.

When Kiku and Megu got married, Hudson produced the special gold version of their game to give out as gifts to wedding guests. There were thus only a couple of hundred made, which explains why it is such an expensive game.  It has been featured on TV shows like Tameshi Ka (website here and you can also see a post I did a couple of years which mentions the show here) and sometimes pops up on Yahoo Auctions, always selling for tens of thousands of yen. 

Basically the doubts about its authenticity seems to have started on October 30 when Sakurada Meijin, a former employee of Hudson and a disciple of Takahashi Meijin (BTW, I love the fact that in Japan Famicom game players even have disciples) noted something really interesting: the wedding at which this game was allegedly distributed back in the 80s never took place! Kiku and Megu never actually got married!

Further in a different tweet he noted the fact that if you look at different copies of the gold Binary Land cart they have stickers which identify them as the wedding version.  But these stickers aren`t the same on all the carts, they are in different sizes, different locations and with different lettering, leading to suspicion they may have been added at a later date by different people.

Doing a bit of further research he determined that the source of the story that the cart was distributed at Kiku and Megu`s wedding may have originated with the man himself: Takahashi Meijin.

 Looking back at the record though, it seems that Takahashi Meijin never actually said it was a wedding version.  He actually said something like "I think it was something like that (a wedding present)..."

Looking further at a cached comment by Takahashi Meijin on his blog from 5 years ago in which he discusses Binary Land, he says in response to a question about the gold version that he had forgotten about it.

At any rate, the mystery continues.  Is the Binary Land gold version cart a fake?  Or is it legit, but made for the wedding of someone other than the star crossed lovers Kiku and Megu?  My impression is that the latter is a more likely explanation. The story has spread quite a bit and perhaps somebody will dug up the truth!