Famicomblog

Been a while since I last posted. Am still alive and well. Thank you very much.

In September I made a trip back home to Canada with my family in tow to visit my parents. It was the first time back in quite a while for me (and my son`s first time ever). After getting over the emotional greetings, etc one of the first things my parent`s said was "There is a huge stack of your junk in our garage. Do something about that."

While most of my childhood possessions are long gone, a selection of my old treasures has somehow managed to survive multiple moves over the decades and remain packed up in plastic bins at mom and dad's place. And as I happily discovered while going through the boxes my childhood video games were among the survivors.

My NES Action set, still in its box, was among the first things I fished out (but forgot to take a picture of). I didn't have a chance to plug it in so not sure if it still works, but along with it I also found my complete library of NES games, pictured above. Double Dragon III, Shinobi, TMNT, Operation Wolf and the SMB/Duck Hunt cart that came with the console. Yup a grand total of 5 carts that I put together over several years. Sitting as I am now on a pile of hundreds of Famicom games, its hard to imagine how I managed to get so much entertainment out of these 5 carts back in the day, but I remember very clearly that I did. The fact that these cost 40ドル-50ドル each in 1980s dollars, which represented several months worth of allowances for my 10 year old self no doubt explains that.

In another box I found an earlier era of my childhood video game collection, my Commodore Vic-20, complete with all the games.
My dad bought this in about 1982 at Canadian Tire, which at the time included its own store-branded software set with each purchase. I still have the Canadian Tire card that it came with, which I think is really neat:
The Vic-20 operated games either in cartridge form or in tape cassette form if you had the Cassette Unit, which we did (and still do).
The computer itself is built into the keyboard and I remember we used to have it hooked up to a 14 inch TV in our kitchen throughout the early 80s.
My joystick!! Covered in dust but still existing after all these years. Oh the fun I had with this. That fire button hasn't been used to shoot on-screen aliens in about 25 years.
These are the cartridge games I had. All of them except Visible Solar System I played a lot. As you can tell, I liked space themed shooting games as a kid. I wish they had made a Famicom version of Gorf, that was an awesome game.
Still had the manual for Avenger in the box, its basically Space Invaders.
This was our cassette tape software. 99ドル.95 for 6 cassette tapes. In 1982 Canadian dollars that represented a fairly major family purchase. I didn't play these as much as the cartridges since they took longer to load, but I remember having fun with some of these.
Ah the Cassette Unit.

I also found in the box a pile of floppy disk games for the Apple IIC, the computer that eventually replaced the Vic-20 as our official family computer in about 1987 or thereabouts. While I had saved the software for it, the Apple IIC itself is no longer around, probably a victim of its own bulkiness.

I'd like to say that I was able to hook these up and play with them but I unfortunately didn't have time. Nor did I have space in my luggage to bring them back to Japan with me. I can at least say, however, that they are still safe. After some negotiation with my parents I was able to secure the continued use of some storage space in their garage for the indefinite future (in exchange for my agreement to get rid of a lot of other stuff: sorry baseball card collection and all of my old books). So they remain in Canada, awaiting my return. Someday I shall return for you, childhood video game collection, and we shall play together again, probably when my son is old enough and my apartment big enough to house you.

There is a cool little restaurant near my place that sells burgers. Burger places in Japan (not counting fast food places) are a hard commodity to come by so I was happy when this place opened up last year. It is locally owned by a guy who bought an old abandoned building, tossed some paint onto it and filled it with an eclectic mix of used furniture. I love the place.

Among the odds and ends they have are a few American comics from the late 80s. Like burger places, these are also a rare commodity in Japan. To a guy like me who absolutely loved comics in the late 80s, they are a massive source of sentimental curiousity.

So as I had my lunch there the other day, I picked a copy of Detective comics from maybe 1989 or 1990 off the shelf and flipped through it.

One of the things I noticed while perusing its pages is the heavy reliance of 1980s comics on video game adverts. The back cover of this one had an ad for Double Dragon 2 for the NES on it:
An ad for the Atari 7800 in it:
And about three or four other full page ads for mostly Taito games like Sky Shark and Operation Wolf scattered here and there.

The best part though in terms of what they reveal about gaming culture at the time was what was in the back, the little classified ads.

This one here really caught my eye:
Lets have a look at what this says here...

Looking for something to do?

Oh you know I am.

Play a computer game through the mail.

Well now just you hold the boat there, fella. What if I don`t have a computer?

You don`t need a computer and it costs very little to play.

Perfect! I`m sold!

Try two turns free.

How much will subsequent turns cost? How many turns does this have? What kind of computer game is it? Wait....what is the point of playing a computer game without a computer?

Its a crime!

OK, this is getting very surreal.

We want you to try this play by mail game for free!

Alright, fine. What do I have to do?

Write SEND FREE GAME on a card or letter and send to....

Wait, shouldn`t I also be putting my address down on there?

No strings attached - send no money!

OK then. No money, no address, just write SEND FREE GAME on a card or letter and send it to you. Got it.

..................................................................................................................................

Sometimes I do forget how much life sucked before the internet.

Anyway, there was also an ad from Play it Again for used games:
If they were in their 9th year then that means they must have started in about 1980 or 81. They were way ahead of the game there.

And with my burger finished I put that copy of Detective Comics back on the shelf, paid my bill and walked out the door into the cold and windy February afternoon that awaited me.

Above: The guy from Double Dragon III The Rosetta Stone as he appears on the game`s label.

Now look at:
Derek Zoolander flashing his patented Blue Steel look.

Uncanny.

Also:
And:
That Hansel is so hot right now.

Conclusion: Double Dragon III is intended as an allegorical representation of the rough and tumble real world of male models. Not the kind of thing you see in public, but the actual gritty parts - the walk offs in abandoned Members Only warehouses, the assassination of Micronesian dudes, the orgies with Finnish dwarves and Maori tribesmen and, last but by no means least: breakdance fighting.

Class dismissed.