In sad news, famous Tokyo game store TV Games Maya closed on April 8 after 35 years.
Games Maya the last time I visited in mid 2017.
Run by shop manager Hisako Akitani as a family business, the run has finally come to an end due to her retirement. It’s crazy to think the shop has been running since around the launch of the Famicom.
GameCenter CX’s main man Arino hosted an event on the final day, and many famous names in the Japanese game industry paid their respects for such a long-running business.
In preparation for Nintendo’s return to producing toys made out of cardboard, I thought I should try out a similar item in my vintage Nintendo collection. In 1974 Nintendo entered the paper craft market, with a series of simple cardboard DIY projects known as the Nintendo Paper Model series (ペーパーモデル).
There are dozens of designs available and I personally own around 15.
My favourite is probably the Johnny Walker licensed bus, but most of the houses look quite nice too.
Since I was going to open an item that had been in the packaging for 44 years, I wondered if my niece Emma was interested in helping…
…I took that as a yes.
We started after dinner. Emma chose the French Castle (フランスのお城 – Furansu o-jo) as our project.
In a nice coincidence 城 is one of the first Kanji I was able to recognise thanks to 悪魔城ドラキュラ(Demon Castle Dracula) – the Japanese name for Castlevania!
Here is the card laid out. It is not pop-out and requires some intricate cutting and gluing.
It was here that we realised this was actually much too fiddly for young kids. I had to do many of the cuts with a knife, and assembly was also going to be very fine work. Emma kept drawing while I did most of the grunt work (continuing after Emma’s bedtime), and we glued it together the next day.
The final result: not bad!
The design seems largely based on Château d’Azay-le-Rideau, which is situated on a river.
As such, Emma grabbed some extra paper from her craft supplies and prepared some grounds and a pond, complete with reeds and ducks.
Final result with grounds and pond:
All in all, we had a decent evening/afternoon of fun. But here’s hoping Labo will be easier for kids to be involved at each step!
Another update on this article on my now never-ending quest to collect a series of Konami Famicom character cards from the 80s.
Recap: at some point starting in 1987, Konami decided to include a collector card with all their Famicom titles. Each card had an illustration related to the game; some cards featured screenshots or pieces of screenshots, others had artwork of scenes in the game.
But one lucky day I found a regular small boxed game with the card. And now I have a card for all twenty of the games that came with one!
On top of this, I picked up a beautiful near mint copy of Dragon Scroll (ドラゴンスクロール) in Ikebukuro, which came with a different card to the one I had, so now I have entered the murky waters of collecting multiple cards per game.
Dragon Scroll also came with these great advertisements for various Konami games and sountracks. Pretty cool when you have almost every item on a vintage ad!
This Japanese site (which I found because it flatteringly used this site as a source) has nicely collated most of the available cards, so this journey may go for many more years. Another great site Video Game Den also has good info on the available cards.
In the higher parts of town where the tsunami didn’t hit, the earthquake still did a lot of damage to many buildings.
With the streets cleared of rubble by the government workers, abandoned buildings and infrastructure created an eerie post-apocalytic vibe.
Nuka Cola side quest
Another classic post-apocalytic image omnipresent in Tomioka was that of the dilapidated vending machine. A friend of mine is a big fan of the Fallout game series, so I made finding a real-life Nuka Cola a priority.
Unfortunately most machines were either all locked up (I wasn’t going to break in, I’m an explorer not a vandal)…
…or already ransacked.
Even the front can sections had been broken into in this machine.
Main Streets
There is a highway running through Tomioka with some traffic heading through town to Iwaki, the power plants, and the next town Namie.
But the commercial centres of town remained shuttered.
A grocery store remains boarded up, almost fully stocked.
This dressmaking shop evidently closed quite quickly.
This poster was advertising a festival to be held in April 2011. It presumably never went ahead due to the March 2011 evacuation orders.
This restaurant is in hindsight grimly named アトム (Atom).
This service station has stood up to the elements surprisingly well.
Inside is pristine
But this external basin is caked with grit.
The signage has collapsed on the reverse however.
Pachinko Grand Hall
I spied this building on the way in, and it turned out to be the main event of the trip. A crumbling local casino at the top of the hill.
Several walls have collapsed.
As has the sign.
As well as pachinko, the place featured a halloween themed Karaoke bar.
Inside is a moment in time, frozen.
Pachinko balls (the equivalent of gambling chips) have fallen to the floor and remained there for over six years.
Products like chewing tobacco remain in their racks.
Apart from items that presumably fell in the earthquakes, shelves remain undisturbed.
A kitchen deserted.
Even in an abandoned wasteland, you still have video games in Japan. Puyo Puyo for Windows XP!
And you can never escape from the omnipresent Hello Kitty.
On the way upstairs there was a commercial kitchen.
The second floor waiting room.
With a shelf full of reading material.
My quest to find a Nuka Cola continued, but these machines were empty.
The new view from the second floor bathroom was… something.
The karaoke rooms.
Heading through the back to get to the final floor, apparently there was a Sauna (セウナ)?
Right at the top, the ceiling was collapsing, parts literally fell just as I walked past this section.
The roof seemed stable enough however.
Heading down via the external spiral staircase.
パチンコ グランド ホール – Pachinko gurando horu
One last look on the ground floor led to Nuka Cola success! I found some mini bottles in a small refrigerator. Use by date: 19 May 2011…
New Buildings
Probably the saddest scene was right up the top of the town. This was a new estate – six years ago.
Brand new homes completed or half finished. The town was clearly growing, and people were starting their lives here.
But now the houses sit abandoned amidst overgrown weeds.
There was a similar scene closer to the coast. This half-built wooden house was never finished and has since been beaten by weather – but the metal and glass door/window fittings remain pristine.
This old man is one of the handful of residents who had returned to the area as of July/August. He was out walking his little dog and heading to the town’s single shop.
Abandoned School
What would a post-apocayptic scene be without some creepy abandoned institutions? Tomioka delivers with an abandoned school.
On the right is a kindergarten.
It’s all been kept in pretty good condition internally, seemingly with plans for the population to return in the future.
Across the road, a middle/high school.
まごころ – magokoro which means ‘devotion’.
It was getting dark and the final shuttle was leaving, so it was farewell to Tomioka, Iwaki and the rest of this area of Fukushima. If I ever return I imagine it will be very different.
One day in late July 2017 I decided to get back into the urban spelunking game, with a trip out to the abandoned towns of the Fukushima nuclear exclusion zone. Since the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and reactor meltdowns, the Japanese government has slowly been reopening areas closer to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and while it remains tricky, a lot of areas can now be visited legally and (mostly) safely.
The trip started with a train from Tokyo to the nearest city Iwaki (いわきし Iwaki-shi).
From there it was a slow train to the coastal outskirts of Fukushima Prefecture.
Nearly at the end of the line was the first sight of something soon to be common – stockpiles of large black bags of radiation-contaminated soil. All soil is being tested inside the entire disaster area, and any found to be contaminated is being removed and shipped out for storage.
Tatsuta Station (たつた)
Tatsuta isn’t a town from what I can tell, just a station. It’s on the edge of the evacuation zone and was partially destroyed and shut down following the 2011 disaster. The station reopened in 2014 as a rail terminus. Trains still do not go any further in.
A new station structure was being built/rennovated, presumably with plans to eventually restore the train line to isolated towns like Tomioka and Namie.
This area is far enough inland that the tsunami didn’t hit, and it’s toward the edge of the exclusion zone, but was nonetheless evacuated 2011-2014 and has remained mostly abandoned.
Businesses sat empty, and there were no people around at all, apart from the two other people who were on the train.
Another soon to be common sight – geiger counters. Most areas now read at levels ‘safe for long term habitation’.
From here on you have to get a charter bus to any towns further in.
On the outskirts of the zone, the Japanese government has been building new houses for those who lost theirs in the quake and tsunami. All seem to be empty, possibly because the residents have settled elsewhere by now.
This is the road to the second nuclear plant – Fukushima Daini. It was successfully shut down after the earthquake.
The cooling tower is visible on the skyline.
The sister plant which suffered the meltdown – Fukushima Daiichi – is just south of the next town, Tomioka.
Tomioka (とみおかまち Tomioka-machi)
While tsunami debris had (mostly) been cleared from the streets, it seemed decontamination work had only just begun at Tomioka, one of the two towns closest to the meltdown. Evacuation orders were only lifted two months earlier, and there were a few hazmat-suited work crews around, and a single shop (a supermarket) had opened to service them, as well as workers continuing the long process of decommissioning the damaged Daiichi plant.
Apart from decontamination workers, the majority of the town was still abandoned.
Half-packed possessions remained just sitting around.
Structures that survived the earthquake better were being used as dumping grounds for goods and possessions from elsewhere
Houses closer to the coast in the lower part of the town suffered huge tsunami damage.
This side-of-the-road restaurant and home had been abandoned and overtaken by the elements.
I went exploring inside.
The whole front of the kitchen had collapsed in
Various stored possessions abandonedThe outside sign is falling apart
Continue reading part 2 here – featuring the main streets of Tomioka, a pachinko parlour (casino), earthquake damaged buildings, an abandoned school, and abandoned newly built homes.
Unfortunately for Sega, Nintendo well and truly won round 1, and not having a great income stream from their consoles, Sega allowed their games to be released on competing systems like Nintendo’s Famicom and NEC’s PC Engine. The games were published by third parties, but nontheless there were several official Famicom/NES releases where the Sega logo could be seen on a title screen.
By the late 80’s everything had changed however. Sega’s third console the Mega Drive was doing very well, and was eventually a solid competitor to the Famicom/NES and later Super Famicom/SNES. As a result, the concept of Sega on Nintendo (or vice versa) faded from memory as a possibility.
Outside of dodgy Famicom pirates of course…
But by the late 90s, Sega was in a bad position again. All their Mega Drive add-ons had failed to gain decent marketshare, as had their Game Boy competitor the Game Gear. And their latest main console, the Saturn, had been a borderline disaster. While it managed to establish a decent niche in Japan (even outselling the Nintendo 64), their previously strong marketshare in the west had crashed. Their entire legacy rested on the hopes of the new Dreamcast console.
As a result, their publishing rules started to relax again, and they allowed other non-competing platforms to see their crown jewel property Sonic. In 1997 a terrible version of Sonic Jam was released on the Game.com, a terrible console by Tiger Electronics. More notably, Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure was released on SNK’s Neo Geo Pocket Color in late 1999.
On March 31st, 2001, the battle was no more. Sega discontinued the Dreamcast, and started developing games for the remaining platform holders, including Nintendo. The first release was a port of Chu Chu Rocket to Game Boy Advance. The end of the very same year the previously unthinkable had already happened – An official Sonic game on Nintendo.
Two Sonic games were released on December 20 2001. Sonic Advance on Game Boy Advance
And Sonic Adventure 2 on GameCube. In a strange twist of fate, Sonic actually beat Mario to a new Nintendo console, as it would be another six months until Super Mario Sunshine.
It went on from there, and the next Sonic game, while multiplatform, was designed primarily for the Nintendo GameCube.
But for long term fans of both companies, it really really hit home when in 2003 Sega developed a Nintendo game.
This splash screen blew my mind the first time I saw it.
The game? F-Zero GX. And it was one of the greatest games of the generation, and still a killer looking and playing title today.
Technically that was about it for Sega. In 2003 they were taken over my Pachinko company Sammy and have continued as an upper-mid-tier third party developer. And over a decade later, despite varied game quality, Sonic is a strong seller on Nintendo.
This is my oldest Nintendo item, a set of original Nintendo Hanafuda. I’m not sure of the exact date of manufacture, the seller said the kit was ‘pre-war’. Given the superb condition it seems likely it is from quite late in that prescribed period.
The set is contained in an unassuming wooden box.
In which fit the gambling paraphernalia and cards.
I have no idea if the the non-card items are Nintendo made, but the kit is clearly built around the box of Nintendo cards and it all fits together very neatly.
Various chips for gambling.
Under the main card box is a tray of other gambling related items.
The card with the woman on it says 百本 or something like ‘a hundred points’.
The small Hanafuda box itself is where we can see the original Nintendo branding.
任天堂 – Nin Ten Do – in the original kanji logo.
The lid lifts off to reveal the beautiful Hanafuda (花札) – literally ‘flower cards’.
The cards themselves are quite beautiful and well made.
These three cards are branded. The left card has the Nintendo Playing Card logo, and the middle is branded with 任天堂 Nin Ten Do.
