kitsunebi's talking to himself again

[kitsunebi]

I've shared this with some people before but hadn't uploaded it to the Internet Wasteyard before, so here it is.  This is a special edition of Comptiq from January 1987 which exclusively covers adult games.  This would go on to be a popular mini-section of each issue for years to come (the section's pages were sealed together and had to be cut with scissors in order to be read, so that bookstore browsers had to actually buy the mag to get to the good stuff.)

Personally, I find something charming and almost innocent about the primitive graphics on display here, despite the content.

https://archive.org/details/comptiq026chottoetchinafukubukkurojanuary1987

 

[kitsunebi]

Here is the guide to the original Might and Magic.  Oddly enough, despite the fact that Might and Magic 3-5 are collectively my favorite RPGs of all time (they're pretty similar since they use the same engine), I've never played either of the first two games.

https://archive.org/details/mightandmagichandbook

[kitsunebi]

You simply CAN'T have a guide for Might and Magic without also having one for Might and Magic II.  To do so would be très gauche.

https://archive.org/details/mightandmagiciihandbook

[kitsunebi]

It irks me that this publisher can't make up its mind whether it should be "Hand Book" or "Handbook."  But here's another book about hands, big and small, calloused and supple, as featured in the game Might and Magic III, one of my favorite games E-VAH.

https://archive.org/details/mightandmagiciiihandbook

[kitsunebi]

Here's the last Might and Magic guide I have (I think).  This one covers the first two games and is perhaps a bit more interesting to look at than the others due to including more screenshots and artwork.

https://archive.org/details/mightandmagiciiicompletebook

[kitsunebi]

Here's a guide to a JRPG you've probably never played.  Burai was first released for Japanese computers in 1989, which is what this guide covers (it was later ported to the PC Engine, Super Famicom, and Sega CD).  Lots of pics in this one (albeit b&w).

https://archive.org/details/buraivol.1

[kitsunebi]

Moving away from computer games for a second, here's a guide to a console game - and you know what that means!  Lots of pictures in full color!  I've wondered why console game guidebooks are colorful and packed with artwork, but computer game guides are usually black and white with very little art, and I've come up with a few possibilities:

1. Most console gamers were children.  Color and pictures are necessary to appeal to that market.  Meanwhile, most computer gamers were adults who would be more accepting of a drab presentation.  But honestly, I think even adults would appreciate the pics and color...
2. Consoles have always been big business in Japan, and computer games are more of a niche product.  Thus there is less money to be made in computer game guides, and thus less money is spent on printing color pages with graphics.  This is probably true, but probably not the only factor at work.
3. Console games are usually very simplistic in gameplay, so very little needs to be said in text about strategies necessary to play them.  Without all of the pictures, there wouldn't be enough text to fill a book.  This is probably true to a degree.  Does a fighting game really need a 150 page strategy guide, or would a few pages of move lists more or less cover all of the important information?  Does a beat-em-up even need a strategy guide, when the only thing you do in the entire game is walk right and punch stuff? 

It's probably a combination of all three and some other reasons I haven't considered.  But regardless of the reason, the bottom line is...hey look! A console game guide!!  Pretty pictures!!!

Grandread for the Sega Saturn (1997):

https://archive.org/details/grandreadofficialguidebook

[kitsunebi]

I grew up playing graphic adventures on the PC, so I never really got into Japanese-style adventure games, which are all first-person menu-driven affairs which for some reason are almost always some form of murder mystery story.  The games usually revolve around picking the right dialog choice to progress the story, and everything must often be done in a strictly linear order, which just isn't meaty enough gameplay for my taste in adventure games.  Still, they're quite popular (in Japan), and one of the longer-lasting series is that of Detective Saburo Jinguji, a series of around 45 games across various consoles and mobile devices which began in 1987 on the Famicom and continues to this day, the newest game having been released for the PS4 in 2019. 

This guide covers a 2005 Game Boy Advance entry in the series: Detective Saburo Jinguji: The Girl With the White Shadow.

https://archive.org/details/tanteijinguujisaburoushiroikagenoshojoofficialinvestigationfile

 

[Areala]

1 hour ago, kitsunebi said:

I grew up playing graphic adventures on the PC, so I never really got into Japanese-style adventure games, which are all first-person menu-driven affairs which for some reason are almost always some form of murder mystery story.  The games usually revolve around picking the right dialog choice to progress the story, and everything must often be done in a strictly linear order, which just isn't meaty enough gameplay for my taste in adventure games.  Still, they're quite popular (in Japan), and one of the longer-lasting series is that of Detective Saburo Jinguji, a series of around 45 games across various consoles and mobile devices which began in 1987 on the Famicom and continues to this day, the newest game having been released for the PS4 in 2019.  This guide covers a 2005 Game Boy Advance entry in the series.

https://archive.org/details/tanteijinguujisaburoushiroikagenoshojoofficialinvestigationfile

 

I've actually played some of these! They localized some of them for the Nintendo DS about ten years ago as "Jake Hunter". And, yeah, murder mysteries.

*huggles*
Areala

[kitsunebi]

This guide covers Dungeon Master: Chaos Strikes Back, which was marketed as an expansion for Dungeon Master since it reused the same engine, but it's really a full-fledged sequel.  I'm not sure why they decided to call it an expansion, since owning the original is not required, and other series like Wizardry and Might and Magic had already established a precedent of releasing sequels which used the same engines as their predecessors.  Maybe since it was designed to be much more difficult than the first game they were afraid it would be too much for Dungeon Master newbs who hadn't already cut their teeth on the first game, but that doesn't seem to be a wise decision from a marketing perspective...

https://archive.org/details/dungeonmasterchaosstrikesbackperfectguide

[kitsunebi]

And one more for good measure.  If you ever thought you needed a Dungeon Master manga in your life, this guide has you covered.

https://archive.org/details/dungeonmasterchaosstrikesbackguidebookexpandededition

[kitsunebi]

Usually finding info about the games covered in these guides I upload is a simple affair, but this one was a bit harder to track down.  Probably because the game's title is Chinese (even though it's a Japanese game), so most info came from Taiwanese websites written in Mandarin. 

Chen Uen's Three Kingdoms (鄭問之三国誌) is a strategy game developed by Gamearts similar to Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms series.  It features the artwork of famed Taiwanese manhwa artist Chen Uen (who passed away in 2017), and was published for the PS2 on November 1, 2001.  This guide is part artbook, part strategy.

I've never been able to appreciate Koei's games, and I wouldn't be able to get into this one either.  Way too many names of people I've never heard of to keep straight in my mind.  It's like trying to memorize an entire Pokedex of historical Chinese characters.  Worse, even.  The latest game touts "over 1000 heroes from history," and reading a list of 1,000 Chinese names and not having them all blur together is something my brain is incapable of doing.  Xu Chu, Zhang He, Cao Xiu, Cao Zhen, Cao Chong, Cheng Pu, Ma Chao, Cao Cao, Xiahou Dun, Xiahou Yuan...hell that's only 10 names out of 1,000 and I'm already hopelessly lost.

Anyway, here's the guide:

https://archive.org/details/chenuensthreekingdomsofficialstrategyandillustrations

[kitsunebi]

For a change of pace, this is an artbook, not strategy guide, for Cyber Troopers Virtual-On Oratorio Tangram, a 1998 arcade fighting game (later ported to the Dreamcast) developed and published by Sega.

https://archive.org/details/cybertroopersvirtualonoratoriotangramthesphereoftruth

[kitsunebi]

The trouble I go to...OK y'all.  This file was already uploaded not once, but twice by other people to the Internet Archive.  Neither uploader bothered to fix the xml file so that the cover is displayed.  But I was willing to let that slide.  Except that the pages on both (identical) uploads are out of order.  There's a double-sided poster right at the beginning of the file which is all kinds of messed up on both uploaded files.  So I decided to upload a corrected version.

Except.

It's a god damn PDF.  Oh, how I hate thee, PDF.

Anyone who knows PDFs knows that they aren't made for editing.  Not unless you subscribe to Adobe (a minimum of $150 a year).  So fixing the page order isn't a simple matter like it would be with a CBR since the jpgs are inaccessible.  I've flirted with various PDF to jpg programs over the years, but never been completely satisfied that what I was getting was a direct extraction that was not undergoing any kind of recompression of the jpgs.  So I bit down hard on the bullet and found a more-difficult-to-use but completely lossless command-line program which can do the job.  Which isn't so bad, really.  Command-line programs are sort of just like running MS-DOS, so there's a bit of nostalgic charm to them, but I digress...

Anyway, with the file converted losslessly to jpgs, I was able to fix the page order, upload it as a cbr, and set the actual cover as the cover page.  So even though the images are all identical to the ones that have already been uploaded twice before, this makes it the first time the file has been uploaded correctly.  I'd like to give a shout out to posterity - I did it all for you, my people!

For the Sega Saturn, a Shining Force III art/reference book.  Third time's the charm.

https://archive.org/details/shiningforceiiiofficialsettingdocumentcollection

 

[kitsunebi]

Shining in the Darkness.  Twice I tried playing this.  Twice I eventually lost interest and stopped.  But hey, it was the first decent RPG for the Genesis, so it's at least got historical significance, if not exactly gripping gameplay.

https://archive.org/details/shiningthedarknessstrategyguide

[kitsunebi]

Here is the second of two Shining and the Darkness guides (or Shining in the Darkness, as it's known in the USA).  Not sure why the name was changed, since it also changes the meaning.  If I had been asked, I would have called it "The Shining and The Darkness," but at least I can be grateful it isn't "The Shining Darkness," which doesn't make much sense.

...

Don't tell anyone, but sometimes I struggle to come up with anything meaningful to say when I post this stuff...

https://archive.org/details/shiningandthedarknessofficialguidebook

[kitsunebi]

Shining Force is one of the earliest examples of a Japanese tactical RPG, so it's understandably not that refined.  Tactics usually amount to "who will be the meat shield" to protect against the enemy forces' tactics of "send every single mother%$^er on the map in a beeline towards the main hero character."  But it laid the groundwork for a genre which would soon eclipse standard JRPGs so far as gameplay is concerned.

Also, LOL Famitsu, you egomaniacs.  Way to go, putting your own logo at the top in a bigger size than the actual title of the book.

https://archive.org/details/shiningforcestrategyguide

[kitsunebi]

I wish there was someone...anyone...from Japan who reads our forums.  I'm not talking about expats, either.  No, I'm talking about a real live walking talking Japanese person.  Because I've got a question that only they might have insight into.

This thread has a lot of links to Japanese books.  Strategy guides, mostly.  None of which are my scans.  I can only assume most of these scans originated in Japan.

What you don't see here are scans of Japanese magazines.  Because other than the scans I make myself, there just aren't that many out there to share.  Don't get me wrong, there are TONS of Japanese gaming mags which have been scanned and are being privately traded in clandestine exchanges in the blackest corners of the dark web as if they were state secrets or something, but they aren't ever made public like book scans are.

So my question is, why does it appear that digitally preserving out-of-print books is acceptable, but magazines are not?  Because NONE of those privately traded scans can be considered part of a preservation effort - they're just as inaccessible to the world as if they were still mags in a box in someone's closet.  I just uploaded our 86th Japanese mag, and I sometimes (scratch that, always) feel like I've personally done more to preserve the culture of Japanese gaming mags than the entire country of Japan has done...which is sad, really, since I'm not even passionate about it.

[JonnyCGood]

20 minutes ago, kitsunebi said:

So my question is, why does it appear that digitally preserving out-of-print books is acceptable, but magazines are not?  Because NONE of those privately traded scans can be considered part of a preservation effort - they're just as inaccessible to the world as if they were still mags in a box in someone's closet.  I just uploaded our 86th Japanese mag, and I sometimes (scratch that, always) feel like I've personally done more to preserve the culture of Japanese gaming mags than the entire country of Japan has done...which is sad, really, since I'm not even passionate about it.

My guess is that these aren't considered acceptable at all, and these are being scanned underground. My theory is that these are private scanned collections and passed around through Perfect Dark before leaking to the rest of the internet. Where they go from PD to the net is a mystery to me, as I think there's some intermediaries somewhere along the line.

[kitsunebi]

1 minute ago, JonnyCGood said:

My guess is that these aren't considered acceptable at all, and these are being scanned underground. My theory is that these are private scanned collections and passed around through Perfect Dark before leaking to the rest of the internet. Where they go from PD to the net is a mystery to me, as I think there's some intermediaries somewhere along the line.

That argument doesn't really fly, since there are hundreds of strategy guides publicly available, but (not counting the mags scanned by myself and other foreigners) almost no gaming magazines available.

I understand that neither books nor mags are considered "perfectly OK" to upload - they're both equally illegal.  But it seems there is a much stronger desire to keep magazine scans off the net than there is book scans, for some reason.

[JonnyCGood]

Just now, kitsunebi said:

That argument doesn't really fly, since there are hundreds of strategy guides publicly available, but (not counting the mags scanned by myself and other foreigners) almost no gaming magazines available.

I understand that neither books nor mags are considered "perfectly OK" to upload - they're both equally illegal.  But it seems there is a much stronger desire to keep magazine scans off the net than there is book scans, for some reason.

My other guess is that magazines aren't as interesting and the sheer volume of them discourages people from scanning or trading them. Unique books are thus more interesting and far smaller to scan and catalogue.

[kitsunebi]

Just now, JonnyCGood said:

My other guess is that magazines aren't as interesting and the sheer volume of them discourages people from scanning or trading them. Unique books are thus more interesting and far smaller to scan and catalogue.

I wonder how many people think a strategy guide is more interesting than a magazine...I certainly don't, but I guess different strokes and all that.

And again, all evidence points to the fact that there ARE plenty of magazines being scanned. They just almost never make it to the net.  So I'm wondering why that is, when the same doesn't apply to strategy guides and art books.  Once something is scanned, it doesn't take any more effort to share a magazine than a book, so why are only certain types of scans ever making it online?

[kitsunebi]

A second Shining Force guide for your downloading pleasure.  I actually got halfway through this game once before realizing there was an improved GBA remake.  So I quit, intending to play the remake, but never actually got around to it.  Maybe someday, but probably not.

https://archive.org/details/shiningforceencyclopediakamigaminoisanhyakka

[kitsunebi]

Shining Force II: Shinier Force was a tactical RPG from Sega circa 1993.  But you already knew that.  What you probably didn't know is the molecular weight of tungsten, which sadly is something this guide isn't going to help you with at all.

https://archive.org/details/shiningforceiiinishienofuuinhisshoukouryakuhou

[ml0045]

4 hours ago, kitsunebi said:

 What you probably didn't know is the molecular weight of tungsten, which sadly is something this guide isn't going to help you with at all.

For the curious, 183.84 u .