Category: Collecting

Japan Pickups: Wizardry

June 25, 2026

I bought the above on my recent trip: Wizardry V for the PC-98. It’s the second copy of the game I’ve bought in the last six months (and my fifth copy overall), and my first ever PC-98 game. I’ll never be able to play it of course, but I’m happy owning it.

I actually didn’t know a Switch collectors edition of The Five Ordeals existed and when I saw this in a used store I couldn’t hand over my yen fast enough! I bought it without even knowing what was inside. The box is beautiful: faux leather with metallic ink printing in the Wizardry-style.

In addition to the game, a soundtrack, and an acrylic diorama of foes, it comes with an entire set of the cards that are randomly packed into the game and a binder in which to store them. As far as collectors editions go, this is one of the best I own.

Speaking of cards, in Mandarake (Osaka) I saw these in a glass case:

That’s a selection of trading cards that were included in Japanese Wizardry games. The above photo is only about half of what they had, which stretched from one side of the case to the other. They ranged in price from ¥2000 to ¥13000 which I found interesting since I would have assumed they were equal rarity? They were all in immaculate condition.

I’d never seen even a single card for sale so this display astonished me. I can’t imagine how difficult it would have been for the person who sold these to have collected them in the first place.

I purchased one from each of the four games they had cards from: Wizardry (FC), Wizardry III (FC), Legacy of Llylgamyn (PS1?) and Bane Of The Cosmic Forge (SFC). In a perfect world I would have purchased them all, but that would have literally cost me thousands.

These cards are the true rabbit hole of Wizardry collecting. There’s precious little info about them online, and I don’t even know how many Japanese games included them. Completing a collection seems impossible since only one card was randomly included with each copy of the game and some of the series have over 40 cards!

Incidentally I have a few others, including (I think) for Game Boy versions. Maybe I should get them all out one day and blog them?

I bought a few more Wizardry items on the trip – related to the collaboration with Atami castle – including a shirt and a face washer. Unlike the January trip I didn’t see any other Wizardry merchandise in stores, but apparently some more will be available soon. I guess I’ll have to go back 🙂

Video Game Scratchies

March 8, 2026

I’ve got a lot of strange collections, and here’s one I don’t think I’ve shared before: video game themed scratch off tickets!

Both of the above are from 2017. To the best of my knowledge I’ve never been to Michigan so I imagine I purchased that in an airport. I think both are nicely designed and represent the game well.

This one (from 2018) surprised me when I found it in my collection, since I would have said NY has never had one of these ‘maze’ scratch off games. I like these sorts of cards and I think they themed this one well.

Isn’t it disappointing how today scratch-off tickets have become so mindless? The reason is that the various issuers found players had difficulty with more complex games and as a result everything is simplified now.

From 2014, the above is probably the highlight of my collection! This one is Australian and has two games on it oriented so it can be simultaneously played by two people! I wonder if I played this one with Bernard or Adam back in the day?

There’s been a lot of Pac-Man tickets over the years, and the above are from NY (2018), Australia (Unknown date, and two from 2025). Bernard sent me the two on the right for my birthday and I don’t think he believed me when I said I had a collection of others. Now he knows 🙂

Incidentally you’ll note how the NY and first Australian tickets are very similar in design. I speculate this is because there’s a few large lottery companies worldwide that make tickets for different countries and they may have been designed by the same firm.

And lastly, this Ms. Pac Man from Washington (State) that was also released in 2018. This one is a mystery since I’ve never been to Washington and don’t even remember flying through the airport! As you see it’s a clone of the first Australian Pac Man ticket which supports my theory they were all designed by the same group.

A quick search online reveals many more Pac Man and Frogger tickets, as well as a Galaga (!) one released by Texas some years ago. Tetris and Ms Pac Man seem much rarer though, and I had no success looking for any game-themed tickets outside of the USA or Australia.

Have you seen any others?

Happy Birthday To Me

March 3, 2026

For a time now I’d been wanting to reduce my collection of gamebooks. This was partially for space, and partially so I could concentrate on the series that mean the most to me. I found potential buyers online but the (very fair) offers received for the books I had decided to sell hardly covered the cost of shipping them. I had no regrets when I decided to toss about 200 books into a recycling bin a few weekends ago.

The silver lining of this process was that in the process of searching for potential buyers I found a store that had some items for sale I was very interested in. I hastily made a purchase, and a box arrived in time for my birthday (today). These were inside:

The core of my collection is the Fighting Fantasy series, which I have loved since childhood. I’ve got hundreds of volumes, which means many copies of each since there are only about 70 unique books. It’s been many years since I’ve found an imprint I didn’t have, so I was surprised to see the above for sale. Of course I already own each book – in fact I already had 8 different copies alone of City Of Thieves – but I didn’t own the ‘Green stripe’ edition. Now I do 🙂

As happy as I was with these, I also bought this:

I was absolutely amazed to see they had this. It’s issue #2 of the Fighting Fantasy magazine from 1985. This was a ‘holy grail’ item to me, and given the scarcity of these I had essentially given up ever owning one.

It’s a fairly slim publication, sparse on editorial content. It reprints (half of) Warlock Of Firetop Mountain with beautiful large reproductions of the art, and also contained an original new solo adventure called Caverns Of The Snow Witch:

It’s short at only 190 entries, but would eventually be expanded and become the 9th FF book. I recall when I learned this as a child being amazed a magazine existed with gamebook adventures in it!

Indeed Warlock magazine was almost unobtainable in Australia. I somehow knew of it and looked for it in newsagents but only ever owned one copy, specifically #11 (which Adam inherited from me and graciously returned to me decades later). Much later I learned the magazine was poorly distributed even in the UK, so it’s a miracle any ever made their way to Australia at all.

So you can imagine how fast I clicked that ‘submit order’ button when the store I bought the above at didn’t just have one Warlock, but had eight:

These are all from 40+ years ago, and represent about two-thirds of the entire run of the magazine (which ended at issue #13). I was so happy to open the box when they arrived, and learn they were all in great condition. Whoever owned these took care of them!

These magazines are a delightful window into the early years of gamebooks. Full of news, reviews, artwork and advertisements, they also contain many original adventures – almost none of which were ever republished.

These magazines were never distributed to the USA so I remain amazed I found them for sale at an American hobby store. I wonder if they came from the same collection, and why the owner sold them?

And if you’re wondering, yes they were expensive 🙂

The above is a photo of my current Japanese Warlock magazine collection. I’ve got almost all of them, and you can see the magazine survived much longer in Japan than the 13-issues it ran for in the UK. Here’s a photo of the first dozen issues in two different languages:

Just holding and flipping through these brings a big smile to my face. Happy Birthday to me 🙂

Robot Claw