The Worst Thing In Japan

My time living in Japan is getting quite long.  At time of writing I’m pushing 15 years and for the most part it’s been incredible.  It’s the very least significantly better than living in my home country of the UK.  For reasons too long to go into here, if you put a gun to my head and asked me to get on a plane back to Manchester or get shot, you would watch me die on the spot. 

That said though, no place is perfect and Japan obviously has its problems, no place in the world could ever be perfect, after all.  For example a pretty serious problem I have here is that as a filthy gaijin, despite having my paychecks drained month to month with all the bullshit taxes and national health insurance, despite having children and owning property, I’m completely disallowed from voting.  Contributing yet having no say in where my tax yennies go is very annoying.  A less serious issue is also Japanse obsession with seasonal or time limited food items.  The day to day stuff is obviously pretty good, Japan is a place known for its cuisine but every so often there will be a thing in a store/restaurant/super market that will be absolutely LIFE CHANGING.  Then you look at the packet or the menu and I see the dreaded 期間限定 and my souls sinks through the floor and into the abyss.  Just make the good shit be forever, there’s no reason why Chocolate Mint Parm is only available some years in summer only, fuck off with that

But the absolute worst thing, by far the biggest bane in my life after living here so long is the company known as Open House, I fucking HATE these guys more than anything in the known universe.  You may think my anger is misplaced, how can I hate a real estate agent? I already own house, surely I don’t have any reason to interact with them? Well you’re right, I don’t, but they are constantly coming to me.  Not just me either, if you’re unlucky enough, native or foreign resident, to be walking down the street and one of their mobile salesmen see you, you’re in for some shit.  When every other salesman in the street sees you they might be like “excuse me, can I have a moment of your time to talk about solar panels?” And you say “no thanks” and they go “ok fine thank you very much”.  But the Open House guys are like, “are you sure?” And then when you say no again they start making small talk while FOLLOWING YOU DOWN THE STREET hoping to steer the conversation back to real estate, the absolute fucking worst.

Here’s an exchange between me and an Open House employee the previous day of writing that inspired this post.  Unless specified with [EN] at the start, the conversation was done in Japanese and while constantly moving down the street

OH: Excise me do you have a moment?

Me [EN]: No thanks (answering in English to hopefully deter the guy from continuing, this has never worked)

OH: Are you interested in purchasing property in this area?

Me: No sorry, I really don’t have the time right now

OH: *shimmying directly into my path, pushing a clipboard into my view and pulling out a pen and offering it to me* So how old is your son? (he was in a carrier on my chest)

Me [EN]: Oh my god can you FUCK OFF?!

OH [EN]: I’m sorry?

Me: Get lost!

OH: It’ll only take a little time!

To which we then reached the supermarket I was walking to and I ignored that last comment and he thankfully didn’t follow me inside.  If I talked to any other salesmen like that I’d feel bad, but with these guys I almost regret not throwing out personal insults or resorting to fists. 

Now you can argue that “they are just doing their jobs, it’s probably their bosses probably telling them to be like that” but I honestly do not fucking care.  Japan is a country where you can literally pay a company like 30 bucks and they will find a selection of jobs FOR YOU, they are choosing to work at a company where their approach to sales is to push as hard as possible and waste as much time as possible.  If the job market was fucked like it is in some other places I’d be more understanding but it’s not, so get fucked.  Encounters like this have happened to me countless times around Nagoya and I’m fucking sick of it.  My example above isn’t even the worst one, I had a woman try to drag me into their offices and sit down for a consultation despite saying no and she DID follow me into a department store up to an escalator.  She got lucky though because at that point I’d only had the Open House harassment like 8 times and the sub 10 count made me less prone to rage

This is the only company in the country to act like this.  It’s happened to me and I’ve seen people being chased around by these guys looking extremely uncomfortable.  Doesn’t matter if you’re in a rush, with kids, bleeding out in the street, the open house guys are coming and they will not rest until they have sold you a property you don’t need at a significantly higher price than other properties in the area.  Even the cell phone plan salesman in AEON malls who can be a bit annoying aren’t this bad.  FUCK OPEN HOUSE, GO BANKRUPT NOW.
 

The Definitive Guide to Japanese Convini Chicken

 

Remember when I used to post about Japan travel stuff? I do, and it’s an aspect of this blog I feel has been neglected for far too long and I’m feeling silly today so let’s talk about Japanese convenience store fried chicken.  There is a great debate about who has the best chicken among both the natives and the gaijin but I’m not interested in any of that.  As a hardcore convini enjoyer, this is the definitive ranking, you can comment, complain, cancel me all you want, I know I’m correct on this and the rankings are FINAL

For the purposes of this post, we’re only considering the following.  Nana-chiki from 7-11, L-Chiki from Lawson and Fami-Chiki from Family Mart.  If you think you know the answer already, you’re a tasteless pleb. 

THE WORST ONE

The award for the worst chicken out of our nominees is easily the Nana-Chiki from 7-11.  It doesn’t taste bad, per se, but it’s the most disappointing of the bunch.  Pretty much all of the fried food in 7-11 sucks ass and I’d rather not eat any of it but that’s ok because their strengths lay elsewhere.  Nana-chiki sucks and if all 7-11s removed their fried food section tomorrow, it would not be missed. 

SIDE NOTE, this isn’t up for discussion, really, but despite what I just said about their fried food, 7-11 does technically have the crown for best chicken of all time when they had the Nana-Chiki Red with Cheese.  It was a different cut of chicken so the texture was better, the coating was spicy and delicious and the melted cheese in the middle was just fucking INCREDIBLE.  The reason I can stand by my previous statements despite this is that that this item was a limited edition thing that has never been brought back.  You were so close to winning 7, but ya fumbled it

THE SOLID SECOND PLACER

Despite what most Hub-Dwelling gaijin or office shackled natives might tell you, fami-chiki is not the best one.  Unlike the 7-11 chicken though, Fami-Chiki is actually incredible though.  The fami chicki is perfect in a pinch, like a warm hug from a loved one on a cold day, you can always count on it to give you something quick and satisfying on the go.  You have to think of the fami-chiki like the shotgun in Doom.  The Doom shotgun is not the best gun in that game but it is the work horse of the load out, old reliable that you can pick up in most situations and get the job done with.  The other thing that elevates the fami-chiki is that all the other fried food in Family Mart sucks.  It stands tall among all the low-rate trash unfit for human consumption behind the glass of the heated cabinet and if not for these glorious cuts of dead bird, Family Mart wouldn’t even be in the conversation

THE SLEEPER WINNER

The L-Chiki from Lawson is the under appreciated gem of Japanese convini chicken.  Slept on by the average native, ignored by the average gaijin, L-Chiki is seriously a food item that you need to have more of in your life.  The regular version tastes incredible with its sort of herby, sort of lemony coating and it always uses perfect cuts of chicken that have an incredible texture.  Maybe it’s unfair to consider it but there is also a Red variant that has a spicy coating that is the closest thing I’m ever going to get to the Nana-Chiki red with cheese.  The problem with the L-Chiki is that its existence is overshadowed by Karaage-Kun, a line of chicken nuggets also sold at Lawson.  I love to eat some karaage-kun as much as anyone but the fact that it’s overshadowing the L-Chiki so hard is a crime.  The marketing department at Lawson HQ belong in prison for this one

Bottom line of this post, eat more L-Chiki.  Don’t argue with me, just go and do it and only talk to me about it after you’ve eaten 1000 pieces.  It’s the best, end of

Universal Studios Japan 2019 Halloween Roundup

If you've been following the Twitter (@Taurinensis) account you'll know that I've just returned from a trip to Osaka after going to see the Halloween Horror Night at Universal Studios Japan(a while ago now actually since I got delayed posting this) .  I've talked about these nights before on the blog so this time I'm going to just give a quick roundup of all the attractions I saw this year.

Space Fantasy The Ride: Black Hole

Space Fantasy is one of the roller coasters at USJ and puts riders in a rotating car that will twist as the coaster falls and turns.  Usually the ride is all cutesy but entering it during the Halloween event gives you some kind of story with a scientist that is using a black hole to open a dimensional rift or something.  The ride itself is just Space Fantasy but with all the lights turned off.  The exact same ride only this time you can't see shit and there's a voice in the background saying stuff like "Ha ha! I have you now!" and stuff like that.  Maybe if you had never been on the ride before and had no idea what was coming it might be exciting but otherwise it was just kind of "meh"

Area 51

A walk through "horror maze" that was hosted inside the Backdraft ride.  Starts with a guy coming out telling you that there's an alien invasion and that you have to escape through a forest only for him to be gunned down by some woman who then informs you he's been taken over by an alien parasite and now you have to escape to their base at the end.  Interestingly, only half the backdraft ride is used and you get taken out of a back door for the "maze" part of the attraction which has alien dudes following you around the place.  When you get to the base it turns out that it's been completely overrun and you move through alien infested corridors to the exit.  At the end you mash a bunch of buttons with some randos on a panel and save the earth.  Not bad but even it's attempts at jump scares were kind of weak although this is probably by design since the maze opened early in the morning.

Cult of Chucky

A similar walk through horror house to Area 51 but with the intensity ramped up a little bit since it didn't open until the evening, standard fare.

Blood Legend

Blood Legend was a short horror movie in the same "4D" theatre that they host that Shrek show in, 4D being the gimmick of seats moving around and blasting air at you when certain things on screen happen.  The show starts by recanting the legend of actual serial killer Elizabeth Bathory and then plays a movie about two girls who are on holiday in Hungry.  The two girls end up visiting her estate under the impression its some kind of museum and then get chased around a bit.  Fairly standard stuff but I'm pretty sure Elizabeth Bathory is the main villain in Castlevania Bloodlines although I might be mistaken

Biohazard: The Extreme

This was the attraction in particular that I went all the way to Osaka for.  Before you can ride the thing you have to go get a ticket to book a time slot and what I was surprised to see is that there was a "Leon Route" and a "Claire Route" and then whole thing was very clearly styled after the Resident Evil 2 remake.  We did both routes on this trip starting with Leon.  Once again, it's just a standard haunted house type affair but seeing all the scenes from Resident Evil 2 remade for the attraction was kind of cool.  There's a few zombies stomping around that jump at you as you walk through but eventually you get stopped by a staff member who warns you about a creature that's sensitive to sound so you have to be quiet.  You are then led down a corridor with a Licker in it and once out you come to a corridor with a big glass window in it.  This is where the two routes are different as Mr X comes out on one end and then either Leon or Claire will pop out of the other, yell at you to escape and then have a little tussle with the big lad.  You go through some more rooms with some more monsters until you get told that your going to have to fight whatever is chasing you and you are led into a room with a bunch of light(?) guns.  You grab one and start blasting and the enemy on screen which changes depending on which character you are.  I think you can beat it and escape but both times we did it the group didn't do enough damage so it popped up during our escape sequence and we got a "You have died" message.  All in all, a good bit of fanwank if your familiar with Resident Evil but my wife also seemed to enjoy it a fair bit and she doesn't know anything about the series

It may be a little on the pricy side but the Halloween night at Universal is a pretty good time.  I'll probably go again next year when they have more Resi goodness for me.

The Vlog.....As a blog

I've hit another one of those points in my life where I've let the stream of content drop because of real life things.  I've been trying to do Sunday vlogs but last week and today I'm just far to exhausted to get in front of the camera and try and talk about bullshit so instead of doing nothing I'm just delivering the weekly vlog as a written post.

In terms of what I've been playing it's basically my stream rotation and a little bit of Apex Legends.  I've noticed that in Apex, when playing with with the rare Japanese players that actually have a mic, the idea of a not Japanese person playing on what they think is the "Japanese server" just blows their damn minds.  Every game I've had starts the exact same way with "oh my god a foreigner" followed by "Isn't this the Japanese server?"  They aren't being mean though so it's not exactly a problem.

So last week the reason I didn't make a vlog is because I spent a weekend in Osaka and after all that walking around I barely had the energy to move, let alone record a video.  I was mainly there to visit my family who are doing some kind of cruise around Asia but we spent an extra day there to see some other friends and explore.  While I was exploring I came across a surprising number of little retro game arcades.  I put the pictures on Twitter (@Taurinensis) so go check them out there.  The one thing I quite like about Osaka is that everything is quite close together.  I can walk between retro arcades and they also aren't too far away from the main shopping areas so my wife can go off and do her thing while I'm getting a session in.  Nagoya has some cool retro game places too but they are in the middle of fucking NOWHERE.  I'd have to get a train and trek to one or rent a car or something which is WAY more effort than I really want to put in.

I also just had to take a trip to Silver Ball Planet, a really nice Pinball hall found in Osaka's "Ame-Mura" or America Town.  I've actually done a blog post on it previously so check it out

https://identitygaming.blogspot.com/2016/03/silver-ball-planet-osaka.html 

Finally, I've added Persona 5 Dancing Star Night to my collection and I also received Silent Hill: Book of Memories (yaaaay.....) free off PSN.  I'm also finally getting a new computer soon that isn't a complete toaster that struggles to run Chips Challenge so not only does this mean I'll be able to PC game properly once more, but I'll also be able to improve the content of the blog, YouTube channel and even the stream!

I'll try to stop being a bitch and keep the content coming a lot more consistently once more!  Thanks for the continued support!

Gaming on a Plane

 

If you've ever been on a plane for a long flight before you'll be familiar with the in flight entertainment system.  Most people use these things to watch movies on but if you actually take a moment to go through the menus you might have seen that a lot of them have a selection of games on there.  This sounds cool but unfortunately gaming on in flight entertainment is one of the most frustrating things in the universe.  

Straight off the bat there's the problem with selection.  Most of the games on offer are crappy little flash games or things like parlor games but this is sort of minor because you'd have to be a bit stupid to expect the latest version of Dissidia or Wonderland Wars.  The real problem is that despite these games being so simple and undemanding the systems can BARELY handle them.  For example I killed a few moments by trying to play Bejeweled at one point and the screen was so unresponsive that I had to push a gem about 5 times before it would select. The passenger next to me tried to play a bowling game that involved a flick on the touch screen and she attempted this gesture for a good five minutes before the game shot her ball off into the gutter at 5fps.  

There was one flight I took that actually had Street Fighter 2 on it that was controlled with the little handset mounted under the screen.  This sounds cool but it ran SO POORLY that even moving your character a step to the left side or right was an exercise in pure misery.  Even the Commadore 64 version of SF2 2 ran better. 

Now most people have the good sense to bring a portable system with them.  I had my Vita for my last trip and tried these games for curiosity's sake but I'm sure there's some people who, on a 10+ hour flight who have desperately wished that they could play a game of Zuma instead of sitting through another AAA Hollywood blockbuster.  

But the real reason I'm making this post isn't JUST to shit on bad quality plane games.  I really wanted an excuse to talk about the Sega Mega Jet! 

This was a handheld device that worked with the seat monitor on JAL flights.  It allowed passengers to bring their own carts onto the plane and play to their hearts content.  Obviously you can't use them anymore but a long haul flight would be a hell of a lot less boring if I could rock some Dynamite Headdy.  My biggest question is why don't we have this today?! I know we have a lot more options for portable gaming nowadays but taking my hardware outside of Japan always makes me horribly paranoid since using a system in public in England and maybe America makes you a target for heavy judgements at least and a mugging at most. Wouldn't it be cool though if let's say Valve released a thing where you could put a couple games on a USB and then play them on the screen in the plane.  Even if it ran like shit some in flight Slay the Spire would help kill the boredom. 

Still no one expects plane games to be good and this is such a non issue I don't really know what the fuck I'm on about

Arcade Quickie: Chunithm Brain Fluid Explosion Girl Expert

Roman Holiday and In Flight Video Games

I know it was YouTube month so I shouldn't really be doing written posts but things got thrown a little out of whack with my trip to Rome.  My original plan was to post a few Vlogs from my phone when I was connected to the hotel WiFi but when I arrived the WiFi sucked massive cocks and I could barely load single images let alone upload whole videos.

Anyway, because I basically walked the entirety of Rome exploring I'm shit I'm far too tired to make/be bothered to upload a video so I thought I'd make a quick, barely game related post about my trip in Rome just to get things rolling again.

First of all let me start by saying fuck Air China.  Air China can eat my dick.  Bad service, bad food, delayed flights, shit movies on the longer flights and Beijing Airport (which I have to go through from Japan) sucks massive cocks.  If you're gonna take a long flight somewhere, don't EVER fly with Air China, the cheap tickets aren't worth the trouble.  Pay a little extra and get an airline with some good service because Air China is easily the worst airline I've ever flown with. 

Anyway Rome was a really nice city, lots of beautiful buildings and churches and whatnot.  The food was fantastic and the people were generally really friendly.  If you ever get a chance to go, you should.  This is a gaming blog so I'll leave the description of Rome there but if for some reason you want to know more just throw me some questions in the stream, I'll be happy to talk about it.

Really what I want to comment on is aeroplane video games.  I never really tried them before in favor of shit I brought with me or the in flight movies but because the security staff at Beijing airport think that all charging devices are highly dangerous I opted to put my chargers in my suitcases and so I was trying to not use all my PSP battery all at once.  The games on the flight were you standard sort of puzzle game/parlor game stuff with a couple of tower defense titles for good measure. 

Now maybe this is just another shitty aspect of flying with China Airlines but the games were fucking unplayable.  I don't mean because they were bad, because it's hard to make things like chess suck, but because they didn't fucking work.  I tried to play Reversi (or Othello or whatever you call it) where the screen just wouldn't respond to inputs, I played a mahjong game where the AI just decided it didn't want to make moves and with no time limit the game effectively soft locked itself and I tried to play a tower defense game but it kept crashing on startup.  To sum it up, in flight games are a bit like playing Action52 but everything is made in flash or unity or some shit.  I'm glad I had a portable with me because if all I had was that to entertain me I think I would have died to boredom or frustration.

The YouTube uploads will resume tomorrow so check back for new videos soon!  Watch this space





Also fuck Air China

Back From Korea

At time of writing I have basically just come from my trip in South Korea and I just thought I'd say a couple of things about my trip before going to bed since I'm absolutely shattered from walking around in 35+ degree temperature for such a long time.

Usually I hate capital cities no matter what country they are in.  Tokyo, London, Paris, doesn't really matter I fucking hate them however I don't quite have the same levels of hatred for Seoul.  It's not exactly what I'd call the nicest place in the world to be but it's definitely the least "offensive" capital city I've ever been in for lack of a better word.

Anyway I did the usual touristy bullshit like visit temples and little historical villages and stuff.  The temples/palaces in South Korea are really weird because they all seem to be copy pasted.  All sort of arranged like dungeons from the original NES Zelda game with large expanses of nothing much going on.  Granted the palace I visited this time had a "secret garden" that I didn't get to see but that was extra money AND only available as a guided tour so fuck that.

The food in South Korea is really good though, especially if you're into spicy stuff.  We were taken by my friend to some kind of beef restaurant and they give you about 7000 different side dishes for you to construct your own meat-lettuce wraps with.  The following lunch time me and my wife went to a place where they served something called Galbi.  It was chicken and rice in a spicy sauce that was served on a sort of huge hotplate and they cook it for you at the table.  Fucking delicious.

As far as the gaming scene in concerned out there I didn't really see much of what was going on.  According to the friend that we stayed with the famous net cafes are of course super popular but I think everyone in the world knows about that shit since Korea is famous for Starcraft 2 and shit pop music above all else really.  Outside of that the big thing seems to be mobile gaming.  We spent an afternoon in a big shopping area and I didn't see a single game store but the subway had adverts for mobile game apps fucking EVERYWHERE.  Sort of similar to what I saw in Singapore with PC and Mobile markets being huge while console users are pretty few and far between.  I could be wrong about this of course since my total time spent in Korea is probably equal to about 3 days.

Don't know if I could recommend it for a long trip but if you're passing through or you already live in Asia and need a weekend destination then Korea is a good bet.

Nostalgia Tripping at the Old Arcade

Universal Studio Japan Horror Night 2016

I recently took a day off work to check out the Halloween Horror Night at Universal Studios Japan and while it wasn't Resident Evil themed this year I thought I'd still say a few words on the thing.  I would just like to point out before I start talking about the Halloween night is that the true winners for scariest park attraction were the roller coasters.  I have a fear of heights so while these things weren't making me lose any sleep, those roller coasters more than made up for my yearly dose of Halloween Horror.

The first event that I went to as part of the evening was the Chucky Horror Factory.  This was a sort of standard walk through horror house, lots of jump scares and dudes in costumes screaming at you as you turn around corners.  Nothing special, not particularly freaky but I thought that, and this is true for all the horror houses, the props and effects were pretty well done.

After that we checked out the Japanese horror house which was called Tatari

This was a another haunted house which was apparently cursed and full of evil dolls that wanted you dead.  We were organized into groups of six and made to hold a rope as we proceeded through the area with a bunch of randoms.  The person at the front of the queue was given a little piece of paper at the start and we were told to place it on a thing to get rid of the curse in the house.  From there there was lots of spooky rooms filled with dolls and people jumping out and begging for their lives before they got dragged back into the set to be killed off.  I feel like I've already seen this kind of thing before playing Fatal Frame but it wasn't bad by any means.

From there we we went into the Exorcist and Nightmare on Elm Street houses which were similar to Tatari in the way you had a hold a rope with a bunch of randoms and walk through the area only this time they were themed on their respective movies.  Out of those 2 the Exorcist attraction was significantly better because the set was a bit creepier, the scares were more efficiently set up and there was a little bit of interactivity with the visitors as one guy had to flick water on the girl in the bed.

What's weird is that all these attractions are given a sort of scariness rating.  Tatari was rated 5/5 and Elm Street/Exorcist was given a 4/5.  However, in my opinion the best attraction they had was the Sadako (The Ring) horror show which was only rated 1/5.

This took place in the building they use for the Terminator 2 show and starts out much the same with with a representative from Cyberdyne trying to give a presentation about how cool all their futuristic shit is.  Of course the presentation gets taken over by Sadako and things start to get all fucked up.  What made this superior to the horror houses, at least in my opinion, is because it's a sort of sit down show type thing there's less of a reliance on jump scares and a bit more work was spent on building atmosphere.  After Sadako there was a similar performance based on a series of books/movies called School Horror Stories or 学校の怪談

This was a "4D" thing where the chairs go up and down and the seat in front of you spits water at you when someone gets their shit wrecked on screen.  Not incredibly scary but still pretty entertaining to watch although the horror in this series seems to be a lot more in your face than Japanese horror usually is.  There was one other event that we missed in the Harry Potter area called Death Eater Attack which we missed but according to a friend of mine who caught it said it was highly entertaining.

If you're looking for a genuinely scary experience then Universal is probably not the best place to go but it's still an entertaining day out.  From my experience of living in Japan for a while, the Japanese are a little sensitive to horror themes and I was having more fun at the reaction of the people in the attractions with us than actually being scared of anything myself.  Still, it was a lot of fun and I'd probably do it again next year!

[Mediasplat] Biohazard 2: The Escape

So recently I went down to Osaka and checked out the Biohazard 2: The Escape event being held at Universal Studios Japan!  I wrote about the experience over at Mediasplat so click the link below and check it out!

https://mediasplat.net/identity-gaming-biohazard-2-the-escape/

No spoilers though, I don't want to get in trouble

Casinos

So you may have noticed a complete lack of content on the blog over the last week or so.  That was because I was chilling out in Singapore on a nice little vacation with the wife and now I'm back and recovered from all that travel fatigue. 

Singapore is actually a pretty crappy place to go for video games.  There's lots of awesome non-game related shit that I did but most people over there play PC or mobile.  This means that the need for actual game stores that sell hard copies of things basically don't exist.  Granted I wasn't looking THAT hard for it but even my Singaporean buddies said that the prospects for physical content is pretty shitty.

However one thing I did do was hit up a Casino located on a resort island called Sentosa.  I know that Casinos aren't video games but its a kind of gaming that I've never talked about here on the blog and since I recently tried my luck with a couple dollars why not spend some time talking about it.

Before I continue about the casino though, let me tell you about the gambling situation in Japan.  It's illegal to gamble for money out here but there are many Pachinko and Slot Machine places dotted around everywhere.  The idea is that you use money to receive balls (Pachinko) or medals (slots) and you bet that currency on the machines.  If you win you can exchange your balls or medals for a ticket that will allow you to purchase prizes in the parlor.   That said, round the side of these places there's usually blacked out window where you can go exchange your ticket for cash.  As far as I know these windows are run by 3rd parties so it's not TECHNICALLY illegal, it's some weird loop hole and the police don't seem to give too many fucks.

Proper casinos though are a different story, these places are really cool.  They have a sort of nice atmosphere and I've heard that they pump oxygen into these places so that people have more energy to keep going.  The casino I went to was a little on the small side so the choices of games were a little limited.  I noticed there was an absolute shit ton of Baccarat, some kind of card game that I have no idea how to play.  Ideally I wanted to play Blackjack but I was there only for a short time and didn't feel like betting anything over than about $10 and the minimum bets were a little too high for me so I fucked off from my favorite casino game to play my two least favorite games, Roulette and Slots.

The roulette was all digitized, large banks of screens with the betting board on them and you used a touch interface to place your chips.  There was a real roulette wheel in the middle of all the machines where a staff member would spin the ball round.  Not only was I using the minimum amount of money possible but I was also only betting on red/black because fuck roulette and the chances of me winning anything on individual numbers are basically 0.  After a little while of that shit and winning a little bit I tried my hand at the slot machines.  Proper casino slot machines are very different to Japanese ones.  Japanese ones have 3 reels and there's all sorts of weird rules and conditions to make the shit pay out.  These ones you just had to get certain numbers of symbols to land on the board and shit would happen.  I put $2 in the thing and after a few spins and some weird alarms and shit going off and I ended up getting $18 out.  I had no idea what I was doing so once I saw that I was in the green I just fucked off.

Casinos are cool but these games can be a lot of fun and when you're betting with real money it's easy to get lost in the moment.  I got lucky a little bit on my holiday but more often than not you're probably going to lose so you gotta be real careful or you may be looking at debts you cant pay.   While enjoyable, I'll stick to video game casinos for fake money because if I lose I can just go and grind monsters or whatever to make it all back.  I need all my money for paying bills and buying games so I don't feel like taking my chances too much.

Silver Ball Planet Osaka

I realize that content has been a bit thin on the ground recently, job stress, large backlog and a packed schedule has made it hard to find time to write stuff for the blog.  One of those things taking time away from me was a trip to Osaka where I checked out a place called Silver Ball Planet, a huge pinball hall somewhere in the middle of what my friend called the "American village"

I know that strictly speaking Pinball isn't video games but its always been one of those things I've enjoyed.  Granted, my experience playing on actual tables like this is extremely limited but I've always enjoyed the odd stint on a pinball video game and when I do get a chance to play on actual tables it's always an absolute blast.

The place itself is this huge sort of warehouse looking place filled with all sorts of Pinball machines.  Some are insanely old while others are surprisingly modern.  The one that struck me the most was a machine based on The Walking Dead.  I didn't snap a pic myself but here's a image of the layout I got off Google

I mean, I've not looked too deeply into its production but my guess is that it must have been made and released at somewhat recently with the rise in popularity of the comic and TV show.  I find it cool that despite pinball being a somewhat niche thing, they are still making new tables in the modern day, that fact makes me kind of happy.

On the flip side there are machines made from the god knows when old times but the fun thing about these machines is that they were 10 yen per play

Most of the machines were priced, as one would expect, at 100 yen per play but if you were running out of coins then there were a few machines like this priced at 10 and 50 yen per go.  There was one machine that was 100 yen for 4 plays for some reason and if, unlike me, you're good at pinball then one coin can last you a long time.

One of the more video game related things that surprised me a little bit was that sitting next to the Tron pinball table was the goddamn Tron arcade game

It felt a little out of place surrounded on all sides by pinball tables and I was a little busy so didn't have a chance to try the thing but it was cool to actually see an arcade cabinet this old in the flesh.  I'm already planning my return trip to Osaka to play more pinball so this will probably be the first thing I try on my return trip before I start playing any actual pinball.

It doesn't matter if you're a pinball wizard or a piece of shit who just smashes the flippers and hopes for the best, Silver Ball Planet is a fun and cheap day out that I think anyone could get at least some degree of enjoyment out of.  Pinball is one of those games that's easy to get into but has qualities that make it hard to master.  There was an advert in the place for a beginners tournament which made me curse the fact I don't live in Osaka because I would have loved to check that out.  Anyway, to round out this post here are two pictures of the Super Mario tables.

The small shitty looking one

The bigger, more impressive table.  Notice the Space Invaders table off to the right too!

Hokkaido Snow Festival

So I've not posted anything for a while due to being stupid busy (and a little bit lazy) but now that my holiday in Hokkaido is over I have a bit more time.  Even though it's not video games I thought I'd make one post about my experience there since the snow festival was quite the spectacle.

Hokkaido is located in the north of Japan and going there in the winter is like taking a plane right to the fucking Ice Cap Zone.  Hokkaido is so cold and there is so much snow everywhere that they don't really bother trying to remove it properly, they just have big ass trucks come in the night and shift it to the side of the pavement in huge piles so that cars don't spin out and kill people.  There is also some mild gritting of roads but aside from that they just let it all happen.

So I went up there for the Snow Festival, a famous festival in Japan where people come on down and build huge sculptures out of all that aforementioned snow and ice.

This Dragonball sculpture for example was probably the biggest and most popular thing in the festival.  People would come out on the stage in front of it to do little shows or give speeches or something but I never stuck around long enough to find out what they were talking about.  The snow festival is cold and crowded as shit so I didn't feel like standing around and listening to people talk for too long.

Aside from the big sculptures there is also an international competition where teams of 3 from all over the world come to Hokkaido to build snow sculptures.  These smaller ones are judged and then a winner is picked but I have no idea what the reward for having the best sculpture is.  I heard that each team is given about 4 days to create their stuff and it was cool to walk around the festival seeing the teams at work on their creations

Dudes from Poland working on their snow sculpture

Down the road from the snow festival there was an ice festival which was equally, if maybe not a little more impressive at times.

These were just sat in the main road in a place called Susukino and there were also a number of small, makeshift rooms crafted from ice that housed small bars and other places to buy glasses of shit booze like Jim Beam and Bacardi.  Despite the crappy drinks the ice festival was really impressive just because of the amount of detail that went into the sculptures.  Also the sun was shining on the day that I went so some of the snow ones melted a bit and looked a bit weird while the ice ones managed to stay impressive the entire time I was there.

There was another snow/ice festival in a place called Otaru too which was on a much smaller scale but kind of spread a bit wider and was certainly less busy.  All around the town shops had built little snow sculptures and then left a candle either on or by the side of it somewhere.  It was cool to walk down Otaru's streets and see all the sculptures dotted around town.

So that's essentially what I went to Hokkaido to do, look at snow.  It sure as fuck didn't disappoint and despite harsh conditions it's something that I would recommend doing if you're looking for a holiday idea.  Hokkaido has plenty of other shit to do, some of which I took part in but this is a gaming blog not my fucking travel journal so this is enough for now.

Usual gaming stuff will resume shortly!

The TGS 2015 Roundup!

Well I'm back in Nagoya and I'm recovered from my post show drinking hangover so now I'm ready to share my thoughts on the Tokyo Game Show.  While I had a lot of fun at the show walking around and staring at all the shiny new games, I was a little disappointing and there isn't really all that much I came out feeling excited about.

So, let's gets started with the good stuff. 

The first thing we saw as we came into the entrance this time was the Playstation indie booth thing which contained a number of games made by different people from all sorts of backgrounds.  2 games of note that I got my hands on were Slashy Hero and Illan.

Slashy Hero is a dungeon crawling game for mobile platforms where you control a little dude during Halloween slicing up monsters for candy and collecting loot to progress.  It's free to play, fun to muck about with and the system of changing costume to modify stats reminded me of Costume Quest a little bit.  However, Costume Quest sucked a massive cock and Slashy Hero is actually pretty good.  It's available for free next month and I'd totally recommend checking it out.

A little later in the day I got my hands on Illan: Shades of Memories which was a really cool puzzle platformer for PC.  You control a cute little black thing called Illan and you must solve puzzles and do some light platforming to progress.  Really fun and kind of relaxing to play but taxed my brain just enough to avoid becoming boring, nice and chill.   Right now Illan is not available for purchase BUT if you are interested then it is available for voting on Steam Greenlight, so go hit that vote button and get this thing on the store.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=507636802

After we left the indie booth we looked at the cosplayers for a while which was your same old attractive Japanese girls wearing either not much or incredibly elaborate costumes.  I snapped a few shots but right now my camera is inside my bag and I'm too lazy to get it out, so maybe I'll upload later.

Next we came across Star Wars Battlefront which looked absolutely INSANE

I don't really need to say much about this one since people are familiar with other games in the series and there's already a lot of excitement.  That said, this thing looks INSANELY fun and I can't wait to get my hands on it.  Tokyo Game Show are very uptight when it comes to taking pictures and videos on the show floor but I managed to get a minute or so of footage of the game play so I'm just going to let that do all the talking for me.

Moving on from there we saw the Sony booth which had a number of cool looking games including a new Star Ocean, some JRPG thing called Exist Archive, new content for Bloodborne, a collection of the Uncharted games and a whole host of VR stuff which unfortunately we couldn't get our hands on.  Other cool stuff included a new game play video for Persona 5 and a remake of a PS2 game I really enjoyed called Odin Sphere. 

The final thing to jump out of my mind was a title called Nioh

A game being developed by Koei Tecmo and what essentially looks like Asian Dark Souls which is not a bad thing.  I'd never heard of it before but apparently it was showcased back in 2005 and then vanished for some reason and now it's resurfaced at TGS which is cool.  Game looks really fun and is just another reason that I need to go out and buy a fucking PS4 already.

Now let's talk about the not so great stuff about the show.

Now I'm not the biggest fan of mobile gaming, I don't mind giving the occasional title a try and sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised but there was SO MUCH fucking mobile at TGS this year.  You couldn't walk 5 fucking minutes along the show floor without seeing a booth that had a fucking iPad hooked up to it.

I can understand why companies may see mobile as a decent platform because almost everyone has phone so your game will reach a much wider audience.  However, you can't get a decent experience from a game on a mobile device.  Mobile is perfect for games like the aforementioned Slashy Hero because that's the kind of game I can muck about with on a train and then put away when I get to work.  But playing RPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest or god forbid even trying to play FPS games on a mobile platform?  FUCK. THAT.

Call me a purist, call me a snob, that's fine but Tokyo Game Show was fucking drowning in mobile stuff and I couldn't help but feel like it was a bit of a shame.  Hell, one of the biggest games at show was a fucking social RPG from 2013

Now granted, since returning from the show I have downloaded and given Granblue Fantasy a go and it is one of those rare mobile games that is actually pretty decent.  Hell, it even has Nobuo Uematsu and Hideo Minaba of Final Fantasy fame behind it so I guess that has to say something about the amount of effort in it's production.  That said, the game is from fucking 2013, why is it so prominently displayed at a big games con 2 years later?!  It's not new, I go there to see new shit, not to wank over above average phone RPGs from 2 years ago...

Konami was also a fucking disgrace this year

When I arrived at the booth my eyes were greeted with a football (soccer) game, a baseball game and 4 girls (admittedly rather pretty) dancing around and lip syncing to some shitty Japanese J-Pop song.  We were so bored and disgusted that we left after a short time but upon googling something I remember seeing in the background of the dancing girls there WAS actually a game being talked about.

The game is called Tokyo Xanadu, being produced for the Vita and actually looks like it could be kind of fun.  However I wouldn't have fucking know that if I hadn't remembered the title that was hidden away behind 4 girls dancing about.  Fuck you Konami, you're a fucking mess.

The last thing that kind of ticked me off was the content for The Last Guardian

All they had was some fucking projection of the dog-eagle thing that you could stand in front of and it would kind of react to your movements and a short demo video of footage that we had seen months ago.  I'm excited for this game but what was on display at the show was disappointing.

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So that's it folks, my thoughts on TGS 2015.  Not completely shitty but definitely not as good as it was last year.  Few things to be excited about and some cool indie games made it worth while.  Here's hoping that next years show will bring much more excitement. 

I'm not sure if I wrote about everything, I'm going mainly off the top of my head, if I remember anything extra I'll throw it up on twitter.

I'm going to TGS!

So tomorrow I'm going to get on a train to Tokyo and hit up Tokyo Game Show 2015!

It's in this space where I should be writing things that I'm excited for or things I'm going to try and get my hands on but to be honest I have NO FUCKING IDEA what's going to be displayed at this years show.

I've been far too busy with work, streaming, having my parents visit Japan and all sorts of other shit to do any kind of research, which kind of sucks but at least I'll be awestruck but everything they are displaying. 

Expect a roundup post/video about everything I've seen at the event, I'll be getting it up as soon as I get back to Nagoya! 

Back From Hong Kong!

You'll have to forgive me since the last week or so have been a bit slow on updates but this was due to a vacation from work and a trip to Hong Kong!  However now I'm back in Nagoya so I can go back to sitting on my ass, playing games and updating this blog but before I do that I'll share a few thoughts on Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is a nice place but it suffers from all the problems that places like London, Tokyo and Paris suffer from of being busy, kind of dirty and full of generally annoying people (more on that later).  That said, the fact I was only there for 4 days and going out of my way to see the best the city had to offer meant that my stay was actually rather enjoyable.  It's an amazing city filled with so many huge buildings that I'm surprised I didn't get any vertigo just by looking up.

The most enjoyable day for me was my second day where I went to Lantau Peak and looked at a bunch of temples and other cool cultural stuff like that.  The experience that stood out the most in my mind was going up a mountain to look at the "Path of Wisdom", which is a area littered with huge pillars made of wood which have stuff written on them that I couldn't see.  The whole area looked like something out of an RPG or something and with my camera still firmly locked away in my rucksack I'll leave it to your own googling if you want to see what I'm talking about.

Aside from that I spent most of the time just exploring the city and checking out things like malls, the river side, a night market and a bunch of other stuff.  Dotted around the town are a number of restaurants all of which are host to some absolutely amazing food for a surprisingly reasonable price.  That said, if you got used to the kind of service that the Japanese provide, the service provided by service staff in Hong Kong can feel a little lacking.  I'm sure most people don't think anything of this but I've been spoiled my Japanese service for far too long.

Finally my point about the people which I was kind of over exaggerating when I said the place is "filled" with annoying types but there sure are a lot of stupid assholes trying to approach and sell you shit you don't want.  I lost count after the 5th time or so but the number of dudes coming up to me and asking me to buy bespoke suits was fucking staggering.  This wouldn't be so bad on it's own but these guys will follow you up and down the fucking street trying to convince you to go to their shop.  Other dudes blocking my path to try and herd me into designer watch shops and weirdos whispering "weed or hash" into my ear as I walked by were other particularly annoyances but generally speaking, despite my previous comment, the people of Hong Kong were friendly and helpful.

So yeah, that's enough travel shit for now, I'll get back to the games! 

Japan Escape Games

Escape the room games like the one featured on the top of this post have been a thing for a good while.  Most of them are made in flash and they are the kind of games that I can never be bothered to spend much time with because I'd rather be playing something....not flash.

Anyway thanks to my wife and her friends I was introduced to some REAL escape type games being hosted around Japan by a company called Scrap (http://realdgame.jp/). 

The idea is simple, there is some kind of plot laid out before all the attendees at the start of the event, then people must solve a number of puzzles and reach the end within a set time limit.  The one we went to was being hosted at a place called Monkey Park near Nagoya

The thing was laid out over the whole park and the first puzzle presented was a cryptic display of where all the other puzzles were.  There were 4 big puzzles in all which had a number of smaller puzzles inside them that you had to figure out in order to get the answer to progress to the next section.  We were also given a 70 minute time limit to get everything done so if you can't do it in that time then tough shit, game over.

The first few puzzles were laughably easy but by the time you reach stage 3 things start to get complicated and me and my group were stumped.  We weren't the only ones though as the vast majority of people attending the event had to take the walk of shame back to their seats at the start when the timer was done.  The winners were paraded out and applauded but you would be surprised at just how few people it was in comparison to the number of attendees.

The problem isn't so much the puzzles themselves, given enough time to think over them I think anyone could work them out but park navigation and time limit make things extremely difficult.  Also a lot of the puzzles require a pretty decent knowledge of Japanese, so if you're a visiting tourist looking for a fun day out then maybe this isn't quite for you.   It's also a little expensive (around 4000 yen for a ticket) but if you can get a decent group of friends together for it then it's a really enjoyable way to spend an evening.

At the end of the event I was given a pamphlet for all upcoming escape games hosted by the same company.  Right slap in the middle of the thing was an advert for a Biohazard (Resident Evil) themed escape game going down at some point in Osaka's Universal Studios theme park.  I absolutely plan to attend that and I'll try and take some non-spoilerific pictures when I do.

Akihabara Aint All That

I am now home from Tokyo but before I put that horrible memory behind me I want to tell you a little about a place called Akihabara and how it isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Just in case there are people who aren't clued in on their Japan shit, Akihabara is a bit like nerd Mecca.  If you're into manga, video games or weird shit like maid cafes then people will tell you that Akihabara is THE place to visit if you go to Japan.  This might be the case if you're a hardcore anime fan, but for a gamer Akihabara is a bit of a disappointment.

It's not a shitty place by any stretch and there are a lot of things to like about the place.  For example it doesn't matter if you're into new games or retro games, chances are that if you want something you WILL be able to find it in Akihabara.  The selection on display in some of the stores in this area is nuts, it's the only place I've seen a fully stocked shelf of MSX games and that's just one thing of many.

However, as good as all this may seem, Akihabara is massively overpriced ESPECIALLY if you're into your retro shit.  I found games for 1000, 2000+ that I bought in Nagoya for 100s of yen.  The arcades are overpriced too but not the kind you might think.  Modern games are the same price as they are everywhere else but Akihabara has a pretty extensive collection of cabinets running older games.  In Nagoya, cabs running older games are 50 yen a pop but here they were your usual 100 yen, which is a little bit BS to be honest.

In it's defence, I didn't have a lot of time to truly bury my fangs in and really explore the place so I'm sure that there are places that are actually really good.  That said, there's no way you're going to find these places without a full day to explore and some command of Japanese to help get you round.  So if you're a resident of Akihabara or a nearby area, feel free to comment and call me an idiot but if you're a tourist making a pilgrimage to what is essentially nerd capital, then you may feel a bit let down.

Tokyo Sucks

Right, I'm sorry, I know this isn't video games but I'm stuck here for another couple of weeks so I just want to let off some steam and rant about how much I fucking hate Tokyo.

Tokyo is a shitty place.  It's SO horrible that just the act of going outside of my hotel room is enough to make me fucking miserable.  There's nothing wrong with the hotel I'm in, it's quite nice really.  I can play some games, chat to my family, watch TV and all that good stuff but as soon as I step outside I just want to hang myself.

My first big problem with Tokyo is that it's too fucking busy all the fucking time.  No matter where I can I can't escape large crowds of people and people who walk around the streets of Tokyo seem to have some kind of problem where they can't stop bumping into things or being in the way.  I've only been here for about 2 weeks now and I've lost count of all the times I've been stuck behind large groups of people, been bumped into or pushed around or had to pause because some twatsocket has to stand in a fucking doorway or stairwell to check a map or read his phone or some shit.

Speaking of busy, the trains in Tokyo are the absolute fucking worst thing I have ever encountered in my life and coming from someone who spent 3 months riding around on the PARIS metro then that's saying something.  The Tokyo train system is large, confusing and bullshit and getting lost when trying to go somewhere is really fucking easy.  Also for some reason, on the line into the place where my hotel is, they just decide to NOT announce the stations.  You see in Nagoya, when you arrive at a station an announcement will say something like "You are now arriving at Nagoya" or something, right?  But not here, oh no, the train just stops and you get some vague mumble as the door opens that you can't fucking hear because there are too many people talking or whatever and before you know it BAM! you've missed your stop because you were too busy fretting over the map trying to avoid just that.  Fucking stupid train, ANNOUNCE YOUR SHIT LOUD AND CLEAR.

Also the sight seeing in Tokyo sucks anus, just go to Kyoto instead.  Everything here is way too fucking expensive and way too fucking crowded.  Just off the top of my head as a write this rant, the things that people go and usually see are Tokyo Tower or the Sky Tree.  Both are overly expensive and not worth it because if you pay the 3000/4000 yen to go to the top or whatever then the only view you get is of a big fucking city.  If you live in a big city just go to the top of the highest thing your city has and look at it, it's the same fucking thing.  There's a lot more than just those 2 things but to get to them you have to ride the subway so fuck that shit, just stay in the hotel and eat shitty food from Lawson or whatever, you'll have a much better time.

But what pisses me off more than anything else are the people who come here and then brag about it.  I've met many people in the UK and Japan who are like "uhh, I've been/lived in Tokyo" like it's some kind of big fucking deal.  As if going to the capital of Japan is some kind of massive undertaking and they are so fucking cool for having done it. 

Tokyo is Japan on easy mode to be incredibly honest with you.  This is the city where all the idiots who can't speak any Japanese go because it's the place where the most English is available.  You didn't challenge yourself or do anything amazing by coming here, you did a shitty overly expensive holiday in a city that isn't really distinct from any other shitty capital.

In short, fuck the people, fuck the trains, fuck the sights, fuck the cost of everything, fuck the tourists and FUCK TOKYO!