Hi Score Girl Exhibition @ METOR, Nakano

I've had work training for the past couple of days in Nakano, Tokyo. So was pretty excited to hear that not only was there an exhibition for the Hi Score Girl manga but it was only 5 minutes walk from where I was going to be.

Although I wouldn't say that I'm a huge fan of the manga, largely because it doesn't have furigana and I can't read much kanji, I do feel somewhat fond of it. I think possibly because of the kind of romantic comedy nature of it and it's setting often being game centers (arcades) and around the time I bought the first issue of it I was actually trying to chat up a girl in the local game center lol.

But anyway, the exhibition is held in the basement of METEOR which is probably most famous for the Famicase exhibition that I believe it runs every year. I'm not sure of the specifics but I think it may actually be a couple of different stores or something in one building, since I'm pretty broke at the moment I only had a look at the exhibition and not the store on the 1st floor.

As soon as you enter the exhibition there are a couple of those kind of big cardboard cut out things that you can take photos with, and then the first wall that you come to has some of the original manga panel sketches.
I've not been to many exhibitions in Japan, so it was quite interesting to see how manga artists lay things out before it gets printed into the final product. For example, I never knew that they sometimes actually cut out another drawing and stick it into the panel, rather than just drawing it into it.

Notably it seemed that SNK themed stuff was absent from all of the panels lol. I only saw mainly SF Zero and Virtua Fighter.

On the back wall they had an area where you could stick a post-it message (I assume to the manga's artist), doing so would enter you into some kind of raffle where you would either receive an IC card sticker or an original piece of artwork. Unfortunately I didn't win so I just got the IC card sticker...

The next wall had the original artwork that you could win and then the last wall was where they were hanging some of the merchandise like t-shirts, etc.

The merchandise they had available was things like Nendoroids, t-shirts, clear files, keyrings, mugs, stickers, and they had a gashapon machine which had badges.
A lot of the merchandise was a little pricey (especially since I didn't have a lot of money with me) so I opted to just buy a keyring for now, even though thinking back now I should have just bought a badge from the gashapon instead.

Overall it was a pretty nice exhibition, not particularly amazing but I think worth checking out if you're in the Tokyo area. (Also free so you can't complain.) It was kinda smaller than I had imagined, but then I guess realistically buildings/shops in Japan are generally a bit small.

I think I might pop down there again when I get paid, since I want to check out the shop upstairs anyways.

Unfortunately photography isn't permitted, which is why there's a lack of photos in this post, but you can see some photos on the MHzSHOP twitter page.

Famitsu - KOFXIV Article - 28/04/2016

I don't tend to pick up magazines often in Japan (mainly because my reading ability is really low), but since I was out and about yesterday I decided to pick up the latest issue of Famitsu to have a look at the KOFXIV article. 

Apologies for the sideways photos, for some reason blogspot likes to format photos in a certain way and I've never figure out how to fix it.

A few pages into the magazine there's this advertisement for a game called Reco Love , which is due to come out for the PS Vita, I thought it was pretty amusing.



(Hours of fun)

Anyway on to the actual article. There's not much to say as  I think most information shown here has already been revealed, or has been all over Twitter recently, but there were a couple of things I didn't really know about. (Mostly because I haven't been keeping up with news.)

Bare in mind, as I mentioned my Japanese reading ability is a bit low so might make some mistakes in what I'm saying here.

- You can do super -> climax or super -> max super -> climax, I haven't played it for a while but I think that's similar to XIII. Max super is only available whilst in Max mode.
- The "Rush" combo in this game is done by pressing the Square button repeatedly, and if you have a power bar then it will lead into super. (I'm assuming this works like some recent games like Persona, or Dengki Fighting Climax.)
- Unfortunately I can't understand the story section so well (too much kanji), but it's something about how KOF has become a big business. I think it mentions something like the first champion is Antonov.
- I think it also says development is about 90% complete.

On a side note, isn't Yuri's head rather strangely shaped? lol.
Anyway as mentioned my Japanese reading ability isn't the best, so maybe some mistakes but there wasn't much new information there anyway.

King of Fighter XIV Demo Event - esports square akihabara 25/04/16

Got home about an hour ago from the KOFXIV demo event held today in Akihabara.
As you'll probably know if you follow me on Twitter, I actually made the mistake of going yesterday because I didn't read the dates/information properly, and almost didn't go today as I had a full day of work training. (I've basically been awake since 5am, and had to carry a bag full of about 8 textbooks with me!!)

But anyway, I wasn't dead tired from training as I had a couple of Redbulls so I decided to go in the end and I'm glad I did. Aside from the KOFXIII Climax Edition arcade event a few years ago, this is the first KOF to be released while I've been in Japan so I thought why not?

I got to Akiba at about 5ish, had a quick smoke and walked as fast as I could to the event. When I got there the line looked pretty small, but I was then told by the staff that the line actually started from across the street!! Luckily the line wasn't as long as I thought but it took maybe 20-30 minutes for them to slowly get everyone into lines and slowly into the venue.

Once inside we were greeted by staff who were all wearing blue KOF t-shirts with BURN TO FIGHT written on them, and then greeted by two really cute cosplayers who were dressed as Mai and Nakoruru respectively and handing out the event goods. (Luckily I made it in time to receive the full package of towel, drink, and fan.) I was given my goodie bag by Nakoruru but I was secretly hoping to have been given it by Mai. :(

(I tried to grab a quick photo but it didn't come out very well :( )
 
Anyway once inside the actual gaming area we were lined up in rows of two in a winding queue as they played the latest trailer on multiple screens.

They teased quite a few of the new characters, I haven't checked Youtube yet but I'm sure they've already uploaded it or it should be up sometime soon.

Whilst lining up they were asking players who wanted to play on pad to come forward and go ahead of everyone else as most players wanted to play on arcade sticks.

My back was really hurting from carrying my bag but I was just trying to focus on who I wanted to pick and concentrating on watching the stream on the TVs.

There was a French guy standing in front of me and just it was getting up to his turn to play he asked me if I wanted to switch places with him so that he could play with his friend who he came with, as I was alone and didn't really care who I played against I agreed and we switched places.

Just as it got to my turn to play the players on stream had just finished so I got ready to sit down on the machine that was being streamed!! If you were watching it live or check the live recording you can see me playing from about 59:50.

Anyway on to my impressions of the actual game.
(Please bare in mind it's been a really long time since I've touched any KOF game so I'm incredibly rusty at the game and I couldn't get a really good feel for the game in just one game.)


First up I'll say that I was a huge critic of how the game looks, and I still do think that some parts of it look incredibly ugly but I felt that once I sat down and was actually playing it I didn't care so much.
The game does look a bit clunky at times, but I couldn't say that it really bothered me while playing.

I picked Mai, Clark and Athena. I had wanted to try Sylvie but I felt a lot of players were already using her so I wanted to use characters I felt more familiar with to try and compare it to past experience.

Sorry to say, but for Mai fans IMO she is no where near as good as I think she should be.
My favorite versions of Mai (in KOF games) are probably the ones from the UM series where she has her down-forward kick slide and the half-circle back fan swipe thing. In this game she had neither.
She seemed almost identical to her KOFXIII counterpart where she seemed a bit like Mai-lite or a bit budget in terms of her move list. As far as I could tell the only new thing she has is her super from Real Bout (?) where she stands in place and fire shoots up.

Clark seems a little changed from XIII also, it's been a while since I played that game but I seemed to remember he could do taps into his spinning punch into another spinning punch, but couldn't seem to get the second to connect. Also I didn't try it myself but saw someone do his EX grab and that seemed to put them into a bouncing property unlike his XIII counterpart.

As for Athena, out of the characters I tried she seemed the most like the previous game. Most of her bread and butters seem to work still and she probably felt the most familiar for me to play as.

Anyway, I'm pretty worn out and I have a few things I need to sort out before another half day of work tomorrow so I'm just gonna close up this post here. I pretty much came out of the event feeling a lot more positive towards the game than I have, and will now definitely be picking it up at launch.

Any questions please feel free to leave a comment here, twitter or youtube.

Thanks.

Blister Comics - Tokyo, Akihabara / Joe Higashi Fatal Fury Special toy

I'd been wanting to check out this store in Akihabara for quite some time now, especially after wanting to get back into reading American comics, but because I rarely head into Tokyo these days I hadn't had the chance to have a look until today.

Located just behind the main street, it's a small store packed full of comic books with quite a large selection of budget Y100 titles as well as a lot of newer ones too.

I didn't have a great look at everything as I got there in the evening so it was a little busy, and considering the size of the store it didn't give me a great deal of space to rummage around and look at a lot of things carefully.

I did manage to find an issue of the Inhumans for Y100 and a variant cover of the first Secret Wars comic for Y800. Had been wanting to read Secret Wars for some time now, and also wanted to try and familarise myself with the Inhumans as the movie is due to come out in a few years.

(Apologies for the sideways photo.)

Was actually trying to find some TMNT stuff, as I'm quite into that recently, but couldn't find any.

It's a really nice store though and will definitely pop in again to pick up a few more comics next time I pass through Tokyo.

You can check out their website and Facebook page for more details, and photos of the store.

In a bit of an unrelated note, I also stopped by Mandarake whilst in Akiba (again looking for TMNT stuff lol), and managed to pick up this Joe toy for Y300.

Haven't seen any SNKP related stuff for quite a while, so thought I should pick it up. It's not the greatest looking figure but as I say, I don't see a lot of SNKP merchandise often so still quite happy with it.

According to the packaging there's some sort of game that you can play with other figures from the same series. I can't understand the rules very well unfortunately (nor do I have any others or even anyone to play with lol) but I've taken some photos of the packaging so you can have a look. 

A Quick Look At: Taito Prize - Automatic Ticket Dispenser 1/12 scale

Popped into the Sega game center on the way home to play a couple of games of UFO catchers and managed to snag this 1/12 scale automatic ticket dispenser from one of the machines.

The box isn't very exciting and to be honest I only tried getting it because there was nothing else I really wanted there today, but it's actually pretty cool.

Because it's 1/12 scale it's perfect for figures like Figmas or Revoltech.

The item itself is based on the ticket machines that they have here in train stations where you can buy your various tickets, top up your pass, etc.. and even includes the little door where the staff pop their heads out if you need assistance. Honestly it makes me laugh every time it happens...

But anyway it's pretty well detailed, and manages to capture the likeness really well. The one thing I didn't like so much was the stickers are really fiddly to get into place and I managed to stick a few of them pretty bent.

Overall it's a pretty nice item, and worth picking up if you see one floating around on eBay or whatever online shops may have it for sale. I'd actually like a couple more to put alongside it to make it look even more like a train station ticket stand, but we'll have to see if they still have them in the machine next time I go there (or even if I can win another one again lol.)

It's become the new home for my Creepy Woody figure lol.

A Quick Look At Sega Hard Girls

I recently discovered this series whilst out and about searching for eBay stock. I came across the Dreamcast figure in one of my local stores, and thought it was just something to do with Hyper Dimension Neptunia. Turns out it it's an anime, light novel and most recently a collaboration with Hyper Dimension Neptunia.

But anyway, I started selling the Dreamcast figures on eBay but also decided to keep one for myself, because it's quite a nice figure.

A few days ago I came across the Megadrive figure in a game center in Makuhari, so decided to give it a try and after about Y1000 I managed to get one.

So of course having two out of three figures I thought I might as well buy Sega Saturn too...and...

Now I have all three lol. 

Aside from Megadrive I think they are pretty decent, I was a bit annoyed though because my Dreamcast figure has some manufacturing defects with some bit of color rubbed onto the white areas...

Would like to have the space so that I could display them on top of the actual consoles, but my apartment is a bit cluttered at the moment...

Anyway onto the anime series, I'm about halfway through watching it at the moment. It's quite funny at times with some of the SEGA game jokes, but other times it can be a bit silly (borderline stupid).

I'm not the biggest SEGA fan so I don't understand all of the references that are being made in the series, I did laugh out loud a few times though.

Well worth a watch if you have the time.

Rambled on a bit (actually kinda half asleep at the moment), but just wanted to share something I've been a bit interested in lately.

I watched some of the Nico live stream of KOFXIV recently, and thought that it's starting to look quite interesting. There's a demo event in Akihabara later in the month that I might go to if I can be bothered to go into Tokyo (not my favourtie place tbh.)

But I'll probably try and write some thoughts on KOFXIV when I get the chance.

DBZ Extreme Butouden Finally Has Online VS Mode !!

Just found out this morning reading TinyCartridge that DBZ Extreme Butouden was unexpectedly patched with an online VS mode recently. It was already pretty cool that they patched in a training mode a while ago (even if it did feel a bit late), but to have continued support for this game is above and beyond.

I had been playing this game a lot when it first came out, and only stopped once I felt I had done everything I wanted with it but with training mode and online vs it feels like it's been given a new breathe of life.

I have only tried one match online so far (got some other things I need to take care of today first), but it seemed OK. A little lag here and there, so it's not perfect, but better than nothing I suppose.

Will try to get some videos up on my YouTube channel later hopefully of some VS matches!

Edit: Here we go, first of three videos of matches I had online, the others are currently uploading/processing but you can find them on my YoutTube channel:

Played for quite a long time against this guy, learnt quite a lot of new tricks but got pretty much destroyed by him lol. It's all good though, I think I learnt as much as I could VS cpu, so good to learn how some different assists work .

In a bit of unrelated news, I heard Donnie Yen was going to be in one of the new Star Wars movies.
Not a huge fan of Star Wars, but good to see Donnie Yen in there. Hoping he'll challenge 10 Storm Troopers to a fight ala Ip Man.

KOFXIV New Character - Kyary Pamyu Pamyu

A new character was announced/shown in the latest KOFXIV trailer,  not too sure what to think of it so far, my general feeling towards KOFXIV has been fairly mixed. Kind of excited yet it doesn't look too great (in my opinion).

Hopefully want to get back to writing on this blog a bit more, have been really busy these past couple of years with work and eBay. Recently I've mainly been playing SF5, Dragon Quest Builders, and a few iOS games here and there.

Anyway I'll think of something to write maybe later today.

BTW, if you play Metal Slug Attack feel free to join my guild > KusoGuild id: 3269.