Time to give pillowcases a little bit of love. Lolis aren’t really my thing, but when the loli is named Takeda Shingen-chan, how can I say no?
The Sengoku period is a popular source among Japanese anime and video game makers for adaptation. Sengoku Rance is, of course, among the best-known of the bunch to figure collectors, and Sengoku Basara will probably be familiar to video game players, but there is also the card game Sengoku Taisen, the eroge Sengoku Hime – which gained a small measure of infamy due to its wildly inconsistent art quality – and the recent anime Sengoku Otome, which I probably should finish watching, since Ieyasu is really cute. And then there’s the game that this rendition of Takeda Shingen hails from, which is Ouka Sengoku: Nobunaga-chan no Koishite Yabou!? That translates to something like Ouka Sengoku: Nobunaga-chan’s Love Ambition. As one might guess, it’s an eroge, and it appears to be a harem game set approximately in modern times.
This particular pillowcase was sold by Apricot themselves at Comiket 79, and was available for mail order for a short period thereafter. The artwork is by Fugetsu Taku. It measures 160 centimeters long by 50 centimeters wide and is made of the typical two-way tricot material commonly used in dakimakura covers.
She seems to be a very excitable and exuberant person judging by the game art and her voice sample on her character profile page, but she looks much more anxious on this side. It’s pretty cute, especially the fang and the odd hairpin.
Then again, I suppose not all the CG art portrays her as happy.
Why is Shingen-chan wearing such an elaborate helmet?
To play baseball, of course. One should always wear a helmet while playing baseball. I don’t think that’s how you’re supposed to hold the bat, though.
There’s that happy look.
And here’s the reverse side of the pillowcase. This side is pretty cute too, I like it a lot for reasons that probably don’t need to be explained.
A close up shot, though there’s no real detail to be seen there.
Here’s Takeda Shingen in other media:
Perhaps the best-known version of him, as “he” appeared in Sengoku Rance.
A version of Takeda Shingen also appeared in Sengoku Otome, where she fought against Uesugi Kenshin in a series of indecisive battles.
She also appears in the eroge series Sengoku Hime. She has a deeper voice than I thought she would.
Just for kicks, here’s a few versions of Oda Nobunaga. This one is as she appears in Sengoku Otome. In the anime, she is a hearty, rambunctious, scantily-clad general who is intent on conquering Japan by assembling a special suit of armor.
And here is Nobunaga and her retainers as they appear in Sengoku Hime 3. This Nobunaga looks quite similar to the version in Sengoku Otome, though I think the Sengoku Hime series is older. This version of Nobunaga also appears to have a penchant for singing. The Sengoku Hime art seems to have gotten better, and I like how her little sister Noboyuki looks, too.
And least but not least, here she is as she appears in Ouka Sengoku. Depicting female Nobunaga as a redhead seems to be a popular design choice.
Anyway, this is a pretty cool pillowcase, and I got it for less than its list price, so I’m happy about that. Plus Shingen-chan is really cute, loli or no.
She’s so freaking adorable. That’s pretty much all there is to say about this case. That and she’s portraying Takeda Shingen, which you already mentioned, so that makes this case even more awesome.
You know, I think I’d probably split my case purchases into 3-4 categories. Something like explicitness, character loyalty, character cuteness (this case), and maybe artwork. Obviously the artwork one in that phrasing of it would apply to all, but I’m talking cases that just have something that make me want to look at it, even if there isn’t a bared leg. Don’t know if I’m making sense. Anyhow, I may buy a case because it meets a multitude of categories, but generally speaking if it really strongly meets one, I’d probably buy it. Wishing I had picked this one up.
I’m a big strategy game fan myself (turn based) and I do have a love for RTS games, even if I’m not a fan of them competitively, so I couldn’t help but be drawn to Total War: Shogun 2; I’ve been playing it on an off over the last few months when I picked it up on Steam for cheap. It actually does both elements really well, and I can’t complain about playing in that time period. My only complaint, though a massive one, is that it doesn’t like my video card or something. I crashed every couple of turns playing on Direct X 10/11, and every once and awhile (though it was still a guarantee to happen to eventually) on Direct X 9. Really took a lot of fun out of the game when you’d have to reboot it constantly and never knew how much progress you lost since it would lock up right before an autosave.
On the Alicesoft front, I’m really digging Daiteikoku; I’ve long hit the cap where most of the text is in Japanese, but I’m still happily playing away. Though I still hit pockets of English translation, so it just seems to be the specific route I chose and the various minor characters I’m talking to during the Event stage. Still, you could probably play the game for a good hour or two without running into much Japanese. My favorite part definitely has to be Gamerica; when killing their generic Admirals, you get to hear them scream “Holy Shit” “My God” “Jesus” “Oh my God” and so on… and it’s funny every single time. I’ve finally acclimated myself to the combat system a bit, and I really like it; not sure if I like it more than Rance’s system yet, but you have a lot more choices that can be made in how you equip yourself and such.
I still haven’t picked up Starcraft 2, which is sort of odd since I’ve waited nearly half my life for it. I’m a bit less inclined to pick it up now just because the things I’m hearing about Diablo 3 aren’t inclined to make me want to buy Blizzard products. I’d like to play a good RTS, though. Besides Starcraft, I also played C&C3 and Rise of Nations a lot, albeit entirely against the computer. I sorta had hopes that Supreme Commander 2 would be really good because one of the guys in the office said good things about the first game, but I never heard him say anything about the second so I assume it wasn’t as great.
Daiteikoku sounds pretty cool, and having seen the CGs, I like the art style a lot. There’s a character (an army minister or something, I think) who looks a helluva lot like Subaru from Beat Blades Haruka and one of the Gamerican leaders looks a lot like Mafuyu from Kanojo x 3, which automatically makes me inclined to like the game, even if I knew nothing else about it.
I’d put it up there with the likes of Sengoku Rance, for sure. I’m digging the combat system more and more; there’s definitely a fair amount of challenge, but it’s oh so rewarding when you tweak small things to ensure victory.
It has a fair number of characters that share a resemblance to others; the two you mentioned, a Kenshin look alike, and there’s one scene that had me laughing though it wasn’t translated yet; a group of Hannys capture a character and then put her in bondage and the same glasses that Okita Nozomi wore. There hasn’t really been a character that I’ve disliked aesthetically yet, though some certainly have more appeal than others.
Unfortunately no Senhime lookalike, though, it seems. Though I’ve heard some people say that Senhime looks like a KOS-MOS lookalike.
A random note: those, uhh, two-paneled boxer shorts seem to be quite a popular style or something. I kinda like how Cecilia looks on the Infinite Stratos one.
So a completely random twist (or maybe I just didn’t see it coming on account of not being able to read) hit me; a nation was taken over by rape loving cyborgs.
Also, haven’t seen a Senhime lookalike, but there is a Kanu with purple hair.
Heh, I almost mentioned that the other day; found a sample shot of a dakimakura I was about to purchase on White Canvas, and then I hit their homepage, and they had like 3-4 pairs listed. I’d actually consider picking one or two up, just because they’re absolutely hilarious.
She’s cute. Unfortunately it’d be illegal to own her here, and trying to get that through customs could land me a very hefty fine and/or jail time. I have a few dakis, but some of my favourite characters are lolis and due to the ero nature of most dakis, illegal in my country. Woe is me.
I still haven’t seen a real explanation as to the different materials dakis come in. Mine are “peach skin” I see tricot mentioned (what is two way?) and something else I forget off the top of my head. Through the HK printers I get my dakis from (that, obviously, do bootlegs as well as unauthorised prints of images that were never (and will never be) daki products (what I have) also do a velvet type; I’m tempted to get my next one in a velveteen material.
Rather different to your figure shoots, but I suppose there’s not a whole lot to do with a daki as far as lighting and angles and such go. Show A side, show B side, a closeup here and there and that’s about it. Suppose that’s why you through in all the CGs?
I read everything you post, all the same. ^^;
Aww, that is unfortunate. There’ve been a couple of legal cases here where people got in big trouble for possessing loli pr0n but fortunately I do not think any of my stuff has been inspected. Nor have I ever been assessed a customs tax, which I am happy for, since I do send a good deal of money to Japan.
I think two-way refers to the elasticity; it stretches in one dimension (across the pillowcase, I assume) but not in the other. I’ve never handled a pillowcase advertised as having a peach skin texture, though I do have some from Cospa that have a rather rough feel to them, which I don’t like as much as the doujin-made ones that I’ve got.
Yeah, I can’t be too creative here. I typically do these when I have no figure post ready; I’ve actually been kind of in a creative and lazy funk the last few weeks, which is probably attributable to summer laziness and a couple other real-life things.
Thanks for reading XD Though I’ve got the feeling you may not want to read one of the doll posts I’ve got planned for the future, or the hentai anime review post I’m thinking of doing XD
I’m really trying to avoid getting in to dollfies as they’re crazy expensive over figure costs (I’d have to pay import taxes on them, being >$1000) but I still appreciate them and have seen a few gorgeous ones I would like. I also watch hentai (not to mention browse large quantities of it in the process of doing themes for my site) so I’m hardly adverse to it, I’m just not “in to” it. Particularly with how popular rape is in it. Also massive mutant breasts, both of which don’t particularly appeal to me on any level. I do read H manga and watch H anime of things that do appeal to me, though.
Regardless of what you do, I still read all of your articles as I enjoy your style. ^^
Yeah, dolls are crazy expensive. I was reading this photography blog the other day, and the photographer was emphasizing how a savvy company can justify a high price by making customers want to spend additional money (this was in the context of how a skilled professional photographer shouldn’t be afraid to charge more for his or her service even if less-skilled competitors are charging less). He used an example of a doll brand that his daughters like; he said it costs like $150. And I was thinking to myself, “$150? That’s not too much for a doll.” It’s crazy to think that each Dollfie costs about as much as a good lens. Or a couple months of car payments. Or groceries for several months, or even less if one has to take care of a family. (On the other hand, I gotta admit, as a firm proponent of indulgence lifestyle, it’s pretty cool that one can buy things like that.)
This has to be the best idea in an eroge that has a strategy element, ever. It’s seriously so good that I can’t help but post just because of it. I beat the game the first time a bit ago, and it unlocks a campaign where you play as the rape loving cyborgs. That alone is good enough, but the mechanics are slightly different from the main game. You start out with a mass of generals and ships and are left to attack the world. The enemies are relatively weak thus far, but you don’t have the option to repair. So I’m guessing once you’re done, you’re done.
I conquered my first territory, and captured one of the game’s heroines (the Mafuyu lookalike, actually.) During the event phase, I choose her and I got a bondage themed H-scene, and during the next event phase she had a new event available. The likelihood of another scene pleased me, and i was only slightly disappointed when it didn’t happen, but what did is so much better. She’s now cannon fodder, and enemies will attack her first.
Seriously, I don’t know if I’ll capture a chick for every territory I conquer (I’m guessing key territories), but I’m thoroughly amused.
Haha, that’s awesome. It’s a real shame that Alicesoft’s games have zero chance of ever getting an actual localization. Well, their strategy games, anyway; I enjoyed Beat Blades Haruka but the gameplay wasn’t all that fantastic. Actually, the gameplay was so shallow – at least, on my first runthrough – that it’s kinda hard to believe that it comes from Alicesoft, since Sengoku Rance (and Daiteikoku, from what it sounds like) are considerably nuanced, particularly for eroge.
On a random note, I saw that Teresa Beria is finally getting a dakimakura cover. It’s not explicit and the listed price is pretty cheap, so I’m wondering if it’ll show up at HS/Amiami, even though it says it’s going to be sold at C80.
This is quite a nice daki. Just the right amount is hidden to remain interesting while not being explicitly revealing. Only down side in the loli.
I love the CG of Takeda. It’s cool to see all these different depictions of the same character, although with so many I imagine it could get confusing. I thought Koihime Musou and Ikkitousen was confusing enough, imagine trying to match all these characters up.
Takeda Shingen in Sengoku Otome was a burly character whereas here she’s quite cute. Although when she puts on that helmet she looks beast. I can’t say I really liked the Sengoku Otome anime all too much. It was quite dull and made little sense – which would have been fine if I liked the characters enough.
I still get confused as hell whenever I flip through the Ikkitousen (or Battle Vixens) manga because I can never get all the names straight and there’s so many characters. Koihime Musou confuses me even more since I can only match up a few characters with names.
Yeah, I was interested in Sengoku Otome and I gave it a shot, but I can’t say it really grabbed me. There’s not much that I disliked about it, but I didn’t think it was all that engaging. Funny, yeah, but the early episodes all seemed to involve some silly conflict with Nobunaga winning in the end. I still might give it a shot just to see what Tokugawa is up to, though.
Yeah, I really wish someone would take the chance and localize them; I’d pay $100 for a hard copy, and $50ish for a digital download. The games are just that damn good, and honestly, if any games deserved to be officially released it’s these ones. Well don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of story based games that could use an official release too, but I’d say that the vast majority of the stuff that has seen an official release is subpar in quality.
I haven’t played it myself so I couldn’t say, but I guess it would depend on when it came out; they’ve certainly improved on the quality of their games over the year. I haven’t played many of the earlier Rance games, but I’ve heard the gameplay system was either improved upon or the style of gameplay changed as the titles advanced. Though I don’t know if I’d say Daiteikoku’s gameplay is superior to Daibanchou; they made some things more complex but simplified others. It could be net improvements, but I was quite fond of the management that Daibanchou offered (units had peace/income points, and you had to place your characters to fill the income for the territory and keep peace as close to 99 as possible.)
And I know I’m probably sounding like a broken record here, as I’ve mentioned it many times, but if you haven’t already, I’d really recommend playing Daibanchou.
Yeah, for a 2WT case it’s an absurdly good deal. Thinking I’m going to pass on all of them myself, though if they introduced a Katja cover that had a decent design, I don’t think I could resist. Well, I’d pass if they make it to a retailer, that is.
Gephalsa has some pretty cool products at times; I think I may have one or two of their pads, I almost ordered a sheet, and I know I have at least one dakimakura from them. Er, two I think. Some of their items make it to places like Hobby Search where you have to order others directly from them. I know I ordered a School Days cover directly from them, and I think another one I got from AmiAmi was produced by them. The one I did get from them was cool though; it was about what you’d expect for explicitness from an official product, but the edges of the dakimakura had frilly lace all around the edges.
So with the Taiwanese circle’s upcoming offering, I don’t think you really have to worry about the Kobato… And yet, I have to have it. >_>
Yeah, I bought Guilty: The Sin from Manga Gamers, mainly because I like Yoshikawa Mizu’s artwork, but the game ain’t all that great. I’ve put maybe eight to ten hours into it and I’ve hardly seen any H stuff (the most notable scene was when the male protagonist got raped, and that ain’t really the sort of scene I’m interested in seeing). I also picked up Demonbane from J-List but I haven’t put in enough time to figure out if that game is any good. At any rate, both of those games seem to be straightforward visual novels and while I haven’t played many VNs, I kinda figure that if you’ve played one, you’ve seen pretty much all the gameplay they have to offer. Though if either company localized Zanjibaru, I’d buy it for sure.
Speaking of mousepads, Crancrownblack has some new ones, which you might’e seen already. It looks like Chihiro from Mouryou no Nie, Tsugumi from Renai Saimin (still need to photograph her pillowcase), and Aoi from one of the Djibril games. I’m digging the Chihiro one, though I haven’t ever used the Mikoto one and I dunno what I’d do with another tentacle-themed mousepad.
Any C80 spending for you yet? Mandarake had a fairly big dakimakura update the other day, but not everything was available on the English site. Did manage to secure a fairly rare Anko Workshop Nanoha cover for a reasonable price; 15000 with the lowest SK version going for 30000 on YJA. Hopefully it’s 2WT, but I’m not going to let my recent good fortune with the Saber/Rin cover fool me into assuming it should be 2WT when they don’t list the material.
I’ve also tossed in a few bids for the lasted Anko Workshop offering and a few more covers to go with it. I really can’t afford it, especially if I win all three auctions, but that’s nothing new. I’ll just have to eat a bit more interest than I’d like.
Now that the preorder is closed, did you end up putting in an order for the Kobato cover? I did, and I’m looking forward to seeing the full color versions of their new works. I’m not sure how I feel about a futa on a cover, but those two would likely win awards for being some of the raunchier covers out there, which is what I strive to attain. I’ll probably have to order both, but I’m not sure how I feel about either just yet. Would definitely be a package I’d want to pass customs without any issue… >_>
AliceSoft is also releasing a cover from Daiteikoku; I like the character so I’m tempted to order it, but I’m not sure if I will yet.
Nah, not yet; I’m putting together a list of doujinshi I want but my favorite doujinshi buyer appears to be ill, and I’m not sure if he’s able to order stuff. I’ll probably be checking Mandarake to see if they’ve got any books that I want and any of the grab bags and swag that some circles and companies offer. There’s also one dakimakura that I want but missed out on, and I’m not sure whether I want to try to buy it right away off YJA or wait till the end of the month, when mail orders would be delivered; presumably auction prices would be cheaper then.
I was waffling really hard on ordering the Kobato pillowcase and I pretty much decided not to. Then I read your comment and I was like, “Ahh screw it” and went to the page and ordered it. Or at least, I think I ordered it; I’m not entirely certain I filled in all the fields correctly. Hopefully it gets delivered okay; I’ve seen some really oddly-formatted shipping addresses written on some of the things I’ve bought from Chinese sellers (and Mandarake, I think), but the USPS seems to be able to deliver them okay. I probably shouldn’t have bought it, being that I just bought some relatively expensive camera stuff and I need to get a fairly expensive car repair (a timing belt replacement) done fairly soon. But ehh … money is just money, as long as I have a job, it’s not a huge deal.
Futa is not really my thing so I think I am going to skip that cover. I definitely have to give them props for going that far, though. I was looking through their page and I really like this one, though the order deadline is long past.
I did like the Daiteikoku one; funny thing is, I assumed that Alicesoft would block foreigners off their blog just like they do with their main site, but it appears they do not. Adolf is pretty cute, but I think the Gamerican girl is kinda cuter.
I haven’t paid attention to much of the doujinshi released, though there is a new work from Ishikei, so I’m likely to pick that up sooner or later. Was a bit disappointed to see that none of the C80 items posted at the Nakano store made it to the English page; that’s usually the store that has almost all of their items posted on both sites.
Which cover did you miss out on? You’re probably right about prices though, unless stuff is really limited. When I was browsing YJA yesterday, there was a Miku cover posted by two different sellers. One was a bid up to 13000 and the other had similar numbers but had a 35000 buyout; the buyout auction was gone the next time I checked about an hour later. Now the same cover has 3-4 postings, all in the 12000-20000 range. Possible that they’ll go past that as they come to a close, but the first couple days after a big event are definitely when things are the most expensive, generally speaking.
You should probably get an email in the next couple of hours if you haven’t already. There first option on the console to the right shows your order history, and you’ll be able to see the shipping address listed. I should actually probably email them looking at it; my Erio cover has the country listed, but my Kobato doesn’t.
Yeah, I need to learn when to restrain myself. I haven’t been buying stuff left and right (okay, I have >_>) but I’m certainly not in a position where I can keep up this pace… you know, without a real job and all that provides consistent income. I’m able to bring in enough money, somewhat consistently to cover most of my splurges these days, but it’s definitely getting harder to do so. I’m pretty sure that after I pay off this coming batch, if I win any of the covers, I’ll be requesting a deposit decrease on SMJ. It’s just too easy to be tempted when you have such a high untouched deposit authorization staring you in the face.
I’m surprised they didn’t myself. You can view their store and their blog without any problems, but the main site is a no go. I actually played the translated Rance 8 demo (hardly a demo to showcase the game and more of a system requirements test) and they had a poll at the end with a question about location. At the time I did it, 1100ish people had answered they live outside of Japan, versus the maybe 15k (I think) total who made up those within Japan. I’d say that’s a fairly decent amount of interest from foreigners.
I’m trying to hold off going through another route until more is translated, but I like Carol more than Adolf, too. I do think Adolf is cuter though, because of the eyes, uniform, and sparkles usually surrounding her.
Somehow completely skipped the part where you mentioned their other covers. Futa isn’t my thing, nor is loli really, but I think both cases have a good deal of potential. I like all the little details, such as the tail being used in the loli case. I’m going to hold my decision likely until the preorder is about to close out, but I’ll probably order at least one of them.
I really like that case too; I love the cellphone usage. I had bid on this one a couple weeks back. I tossed in a fairly high bid, but someone else from SMJ ultimately outbid me. My highest bid was at like 30000, too… >_> For whatever reason though, I guess the seller could see that the bid was constantly being raised by the same user without actually going up, so they canceled the bid from the SMJ account. The auction closed with no winner, another user posted the item, I won it for 15000, and the other guy is still trying to sell his cover.
It was the dakimakura cover by Carnelian of a character named Lucrezia. It was this one here; the images seem to be busted on the website for some reason. I wound up bidding on it on YJA the other day. The funny thing is, I checked the auction listing the other day and I think someone was using SMJ to bid on it. I wound up bidding too much money, probably, and I know I’m going to feel dumb because I think the listing says the guy won’t get it till the end of the month – when the mail orders ship – and I bet there will be a lot of listings for it at a much cheaper price than what I bid.
Dumb question: does your shipping address on the BW Store page list your name? Mine lists my location information correctly but doesn’t list my name, and I wonder if I didn’t fill it in correctly. I kinda think the USPS would still deliver it correctly even without a name but I wonder.
That’s an interesting poll for Alicesoft to run. I wonder if they were genuinely curious or if they just did it for kicks. It would be very nice if they took a more accommodating stance towards non-Japanese.
That’s a funny story, I wonder if anime goods sellers see chaos_japan_smj and think, “Oh great, it’s some white guy again.” I guess I was fortunate that whoever it was that was bidding on the Carnelian pillowcase dropped out early.
Incidentally, that reminds me that I ought to check up on whether Yokatta got my Charles pillowcase or not.
Heh, I actually thought about buying that cover myself. I bid on three covers from the same dude, and he also had a bid going on for that cover. But I was already at around 56000 in total bids, so I thought tossing in another, even semi conservative bid, would have been overkill. Though not that it really mattered, as I’ve already been outbid on 2/3 items, including the Anko Workshop cover. Luckily there are still some auctions that are lower than my max bid was, so I might try to snag one of those, but I’m also thinking of just waiting a few days. I don’t think they do webshop sales often, but I still remember how pissed I was when I won that Nanoha case and literally 10 minutes later, the dakimakura blog had a post on webshop orders for it.
Nope, just my shipping address.
Probably were just doing it for kicks, though the Japan option was split up into Eastern/Western, so they probably just wanted to be thorough and see where everyone was coming from. Hopefully they will eventually soften up on their policies, though. I’d love to be able to check out their official site.
I don’t imagine too many sellers would have a problem, unless they’re constantly getting the SMJ bid raised but no one else is bidding on it to increase the bid. I imagine that would peeve them a bit, or if they have personal problems with foreigners, but other than that, SMJ seems to pay things fairly quickly and ensures a smooth transaction. I really need to get some basic Japanese down, though. There is at least one seller who usually has tons of dakimakura covers, that is willing to ship internationally as long as communication isn’t a problem, and I’ve purchased quite a few items from him through SMJ before.
I had two bidding moments that pissed me off immensely the last couple of days, all circling around the same cover. A few months ago, I had tried bidding on a Marks Nymph cover; I maxed my bid up to 31500, but still lost. There was another one at the time going for 30000, but I figured I had seen it up for some time and no one was bidding on it, so I had time. Or at least that’s what I thought was the deal, but I’m thinking now that I had tried to bid on it.
Anyhow, fast forward to about two weeks ago. One pops up for bid at a low price. But it only has a day left, and my bidding limit is all tied up into two auctions… that end within an hour of this cover. One is for 20000 and the other is 16000, and I have maybe 500 yen other than that left untouched. I’m outbid pretty early on the 16000, but it’s not enough to cover the 20000ish bid on the cover. I do get my bidding limit back pretty fast, though. I’m outbid on the other cover with 30 minutes to go! YES! Only… my bidding limit didn’t raise as quickly as the other cover… and the auction ends at 20500. Much less than what I was willing to pay the first time around, and likely willing to pay if I had my full bidding limit.
Anyhow, a couple of days ago, the guy I mentioned previously who has listed the cover at 30000 bid for months, finally gets tired of waiting I guess. He puts it up for bid. I try putting a healthy bid in with my free limit, but nope, he’s much like fwisy in that he doesn’t like automated auctions. It closes out at 20500.
Now I could have bid on Yokatta here, but I really didn’t want to give out the money up front this time. I had bought the two Illust Guerrilla covers, and when I saw the Evening Call Asuka cover opened, I had to pick it up and I figured what the hell, so I preordered the Kanu with it. Oh well though, maybe I’ll get another chance at it someday.
On the side of Yokatta, do they usually email you when they get your items, or what? I put in the two orders (separately), and requested they be shipped at the same time, but I’d imagine the Illust Guerrilla covers and possibly the Asuka should be in by now. I wonder if they’re just waiting for everything to get in before informing me.
I guess it’d be too much to hope for an eroge maker to pay much attention to the overseas market. I know at least one of the guys at JAST is a huge Sengoku Rance fan so if there were any possibility at all of Alicesoft’s games making it to the US, I’m sure they would have already explored it. Oh well,
I won the auction for the Carnelian one at around 17.5k I think (I probably ought to check and verify the cost). I think that was the first one to be listed, and I saw another auction for the same pillowcase end at like 24 or 25k, and I’m seeing several others that seem to be getting heavy bidding. I really wish I had just ordered it from her website and avoided the big markup; I think it was listed at only 10k there.
Incidentally, I’m sitting here thinking, “Geez, 30k yen for a pillowcase” … and I just dropped $260 for a backpack. Granted, it’s a sexy backpack, and I want a new backpack for my camera stuff, but it’s a backpack.
That’s the one thing about Yokatta, they almost never tell me when they get my stuff. I think your supposition is right; they seem to send receipt notices when they get everything. Usually I have to e-mail them and ask what they’ve received if I want them to ship stuff before all my orders are gotten in. On that note, do you know if Illust Guerrilla had those pillowcases ready to ship? I ordered another one of Nagomi and Sono just to have a backup, but I don’t recall seeing their stock status listed on the order page.
True enough, and the games are certainly popular as far as a foreign base goes; if AliceSoft was interested, I really think they’d be able to sell a decent number of copies (maybe not at the 8000ish yen mark that the game initially retailed for.) Still, for an unvoiced game that has a fan translation covering 99% of the text (just some random spots I’ve run into and generic generals), my uninformed eye doesn’t see a ton of extra expenses. And the game’s initial run has definitely run its course, I’d say. They would have good reason to worry about Japanese consumers importing it for the uncensored goodness, but I doubt it would hurt sales at this point.
Heh, so the auction did end for you. I still have one active bid (that I don’t really expect to win) closing out in the next 8 hours. The same seller has the cover you won closing out at the same time; SMJ has the high bid right now. Was wondering if it was you, but obviously it isn’t. Will let you know what it goes for, though. Current’y it’s at 14.5k. That Miku cover I mentioned earlier though seems to be insanely popular. It doesn’t surprise me, I guess… it had three things going for it: Miku is strangely popular, the sample image was only posted as a shadow (I know the curiosity drove me to bid), and the circle seems to be fairly popular. I’ve frequently seen at least one of their cases fetch 20000+ on YJA, and one particular case is always posted at that rate on Mandarake. I consider Mandarake to be pretty fair with their dakimakura prices, too.
Anyhow, I saw a maximum of 4 of the cases up at one time. I know one sold at 35000 buyout, but there’s currently two up for 27000 and 28500, with some hours left. I wouldn’t be surprised if either of them broke 30k.
Heh, I feel you on the price of goods. Granted my dakimakura spending is way out of control, but I’m looking into building a new PC soon. Won’t be getting anything cutting edge, but it will be a substantial and fairly cheap upgrade compared to what I paid for this piece about four years ago. I just bought a new video card about a month back, so I’ll just be picking up a new CPU, motherboard, and such. I figure about spending maybe $500-600ish on the internal components. And yet, I’m seriously considering dropping $200-300 on the case alone.
Or on a more hobby related scale, I just broke my figure dry spell with a couple of figures from Hobby Search. All of them are nice figures, but none are particularly ones I wanted or needed for my collection. Instead, I purchased them with the sole intent of defacing them; I’ve recently become fascinated with makaizou, and I just had the sudden urge to tinker around with a couple of cheapish figures.
I think so, but I can’t say for sure. I’m on their mailing list, so I received a newsletter when the store page went up. You know Google Translation can be hit or miss, so I’m not sure about stock on hand. I know that about a week before the sale, they did a mail order thing for a couple of their covers, where they actually did list the quantities they had. Didn’t have a store page for it though, and it was a different batch of covers (Sheryl Nome is the only one I remember.)
Think Yokatta said they should have the products in hand within 7 days or so. If you’d like, I could forward you the email I got from Illust Guerrilla and you can try looking over it yourself. Just shoot me an email if you want, and I’ll dig it up.
Yeah, plus I suppose if they passed off distribution to a company like JAST, reverse importation wouldn’t be a problem since any Japanese person who wants the game probably already owns it. I’m not expecting to ever see an Alicesoft game get a US localization but then again, I was surprised that JAST localized Demonbane and is bringing over School Days; those are certainly two of the more high-profile eroge out there.
Yeah, I won that auction, I wasn’t sure how high I wanted to go. In retrospect, maybe I should’ve waited a couple of days, since it doesn’t seem like the current listings for that pillowcase are getting much activity. I’ve been burned a lot by waffling on things, though, so I have any regrets.
I kinda want to buy a laptop. I have no idea why; I have a laptop already (albeit about five years old) and the only thing I ever used it for was two-boxing in Warcraft. Right now it’s serving as a stand for some of my figures. And yet I want a laptop.
Haha, that’s awesome. Having damaged some of my figures, I know that there’s no way I could do mods like that; I had a really difficult time matching the paint on the hair of the figures I tried to repair, I have no clue how one goes about matching skin tones. I gotta admit though, some of them look really cool; I check YJA listings for them every now and then and I gotta say that I’m tempted.
Hmm, okay. I’ll take your word for it since at any rate, I’m not going to ask Yokatta to tally up my stuff till the end of this month, when I think they’ll be getting the last of the stuff I’ve ordered. I mean, besides the pillowcases I’m going to be ordering really soon. HOP’s Nanoha is pretty cute.
Pretty much, though the risk of importation is probably why all titles that do eventually get a translation will be quite some time after the Japanese release. It’s unfortunate, but nothing can really be done to combat it. I’d imagine that even if a game had a six month gap between the Japanese/uncensored release, all but the most hardcore fans would probably wait to import, for uncensored goodness and what’s likely to be a cheaper price. Good to see more high profile games getting translated, though. I know I mentioned just recently that the majority of the stuff that has been translated is pretty shitty pure H games.
I don’t really have any hope of ever getting official AliceSoft translations, but at least it appears that they’re taking a soft stance on combating it. I know a few Japanese companies have ask translators to stop, deleted the translation Wiki of a translation, or even escalated to legal action… so it could be worse. If I recall correctly, the guy who translated Rance actually asked AliceSoft if it was okay to do so. Er, actually, I think I may be wrong on that; I’m pretty what I’m thinking of was that he translated a smaller visual novel (want to say Brass Restoration) with the consent of the owner. Would be nice to think that he got an okay from AliceSoft, though.
Honestly, it can be really hit or miss how a cover will sell, so I definitely wouldn’t regret it. Generally speaking, things will sell fairly high for a couple days after a big event, but no one can say going from there. The items may sell at a high price, and then never show up again, or in some cases the price can jump even higher after the glut of covers has cut down. I guess the usual is for the price to stabilize at a lower rate than the post event price, but I’m sure it depends on a lot of different factors.
I lost the third case too, but I’m fine with it. I put in half serious bids on all three, with the only one that I really wanted being from Anko Workshop. But I’m hoping that they’ll do a store sale at some point for it. If not, from what I’ve seen it’s not a case that I absolutely had to have; I like any case that has two girls on one side, but I’m fairly sure the other side only had the blonde when I liked the silver haired girl more.
On a funny note though, the Nymph cover has made another appearance. I was fairly sure I’d never see it again, barring a resale event. At this point, I’m actually taking the opposite of my normal stance; I’m not out to win it. I’ve tossed a bid that’s in line with the last two sales, and I’m just going to forget about it. If I win it, that’s great, but if I don’t it’s not a big deal.
I don’t know, I’ve never been big on laptops. I’m sure they could be handy to have, especially in class or something for note taking (if you weren’t too distracted otherwise…), but I’m definitely more a desktop guy. I think it’s mainly because I haven’t found a single laptop yet that had a comfortable keyboard. I’d probably defeat half the purpose of a laptop by carrying around a full size board with me where ever I went.
Heh, I don’t expect good things to happen. I hardly have a creative bone in my body, and I’m not very good at working on a small scale. Still, hopefully it should be fun, and I won’t be out too much money if I screw up terribly (at least as far as figures go.) Though I can’t believe I’ll be defacing an Alter figure. I picked up the recent Saber/Rin 1/8 figures, along with a Taiga and Nymph figure. The latter two I probably won’t touch unless I actually happen to have a hand for this; I actually really like the Taiga figure and I think it would have some potential as far as modifications go. The Nymph figure has sold fairly well recently; I watched two modifications sell for in the 30000-40000 range.
I actually did end up picking up two figures. I had regretted not picking up Tony’s Miku (despite being kinda jaded with Tony, and not being a huge Miku fan), so it seemed like a decent choice to pick up a modified version of. And then a figure of the main character of Okami-san and Her Seven Companions (I don’t know the source material at all.) Decided on that one because of the pose with included accessory. Going to wait and see how I like these two before I consider picking any more up, but there have been a few others that have really interested me. Especially modifications of the 1/4 Sora, damn. And the seller Nekopunch1966 seems to have a lot of creative, raunchy (and usually expensive) modifications.
Huh, I had to actually pull up the dakimakura blog to see which one you were talking about. I’m just so used to seeing loli Nanoha that I didn’t draw the connection first thing when I saw it. She’s definitely cute, but she just didn’t really look like Nanoha to me at first. I really do like the backside image of that case, though. I also have some mixed feelings on the Fate case they’re reselling; of course I love the backside image, and the front side image is okay, but something just seems off with it to me.
Yeah, I also have a better-safe-than-sorry outlook on life, so I don’t mind paying more money to make certain that I’m going to win the auction. Though I suppose odd things can happen, like that time SMJ mysteriously removed the Giga Pulse figure I had bid on and won from my list of items. And I suppose I’m not showing much adherence to that philosophy when I don’t know how to change a tire on my car. Or how a good chunk of my computer data wasn’t backed up (until tonight, since I just recently bought a 3TB external hard disk). Or when I buy that Kobato pillowcase, which could set off alarms if anybody inspects that parcel.
Yeah, I’m not big on laptops either, which is another reason why I don’t know why I want a new one. I do use one as my work-issued machine, which is very convenient since it makes telecommuting easier. I don’t mind the keyboard so much now, nor the smaller screen, nor even Vista (though it does suck, and I probably should upgrade the machine’s OS to 7), but I really, really dislike touchpads. Or the little clit that some laptops have to move the pointer around. I’d have to carry a mouse around with it if I took it anywhere. Fortunately for me, I’ve got a big collection of wireless mice because I need to replace my current mouse (which sometimes has sticky buttons) but I haven’t yet found one that I like, and Microsoft no longer manufactures this one.
At the least, it sounds like a fun project. I’d still really like to get into model kit building, but I want an airbrush first, and I don’t have the facilities here to set up a painting station. I’d need a little more space and a lot more ventilation.
There was a Fate Testarossa conversion that I wanted; it was of Alter’s plain-clothes figure, which I’m not very enamored with, but the nude version looked very cool. The price went quite a bit higher than I would have liked to pay for it, though.
Yeah, I was slightly confused at first as well. I feel sorta odd getting two Nanoha covers (this one and the Cyclone one) while not having a single Fate pillowcase. I agree about the Fate pillowcase but for the opposite reason; I like the front side image a lot, but something about her expression on the back-view side seems iffy to me. I dunno, I might pick it up just for collecting purposes, since I’ve got the Vivio pillowcase preordered and I’m almost certainly going to order the Nanoha one. Speaking of preorders, it’s nice to see Dizzy colored. I’m definitely going to get it – maybe two just to have a backup – but I kinda wish there was a bit more detail in her stomach section.
It’s kinda odd how many dakimakura covers there are that I want to buy now. Typically dakimakura covers take fourth priority in my spending – figures come first, then cameras, and then doll stuff. Figures I always like since I collect and display them and figure pictures are the reason why this site exists. I like camera stuff since it’s shiny and fun to play with. I tend not to do much with doll stuff – both Simone and Yumi are just wearing their bondage outfits, despite all the doll clothes that I buy. Dakimakura covers, though, I tend to just stick in a drawer, where they aren’t very useful. But I guess I’m gonna have to allocate some money for Nanoha, Dizzy, and maybe Fate – the HOP one or a different one, if I can find one. And the Carnelian pillowcase.
Incidentally, I got my $260 backpack. It’s pretty spiffy.
Same here. Every time I’ve held out on a case I ended up regretting it. Same with figures; granted I managed to cancel a lot of potentially shitty preorders, I also canceled Velvet and Buddy, which both turned out amazing. That’s a tad strange with SMJ. I don’t know if I mentioned it here before, but I’m in a bit of an undesirable situation myself right now. I won an item, they’ve paid for it… it has been about 40 days now, and they still haven’t received it. Something tells me I’ll eventually be responsible for their costs, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the day they request payment doesn’t come anytime soon. Assuming they never receive the item, anyway.
Yeah I forgot to mention the pad myself; I can’t stand them either. So if I ever got a laptop, I’d definitely carry a fullsize keyboard and mouse around with me. I don’t mind the smaller screen so much, though it certainly isn’t optimal. I never had to deal with Vista, luckily. I went from XP to a free student copy of Windows 7. Took some getting used to, but I’d say most of the changes are certainly for the better. I use a Razer Diamondback for my mouse. Was originally for gaming (and still is), but I find it’s really quite comfortable and responds very nicely.
Seeing these pictures has kinda scared me a bit. This dude did an amazing job, though. Don’t know why I thought figures actually formed bodies underneath the clothing layer, so it’s certainly going to be a more difficult project than I anticipated. Should still be fun, though.
The black dress one? Yeah, I’ve seen a few based off that figure and they have been really cool. She’s definitely a popular character for modification. Heh, they can certainly get expensive. I’ve only been actively browsing the category the last few weeks and I’ve seen them reach as high as 70000, but I’ve seen screencaps of auctions that have gone quite a bit higher.
You don’t have a single Fate case? There certainly seems to be something wrong with that. I do remember you mentioned you haven’t found one you really liked yet, but the fact that you don’t have one at all just seems strange to me. Now that you mention it, Dizzy’s stomach is a bit bland. I’ll still get the cover for sure, but as I don’t see a preorder date yet, hopefully they’re still tweaking it a bit.
There’s always too many dakimakura covers I want. I just don’t have enough money to afford them all. It’s a really expensive hobby. I’m actually trying to unload a few of my figures now. I really want to build a new computer sooner than later, but I don’t want to curtail dakimakura spending more than I have to (which is almost all with my current budget.) On a figure note, I recently joined Myfigurecollection, and I’m surprised at how cool a site it is. Really like the options to add/sell/wishlist items and how that whole thing is done, and there’s a dakimakura club! 😀
That certainly is a spiffy backpack.
I just started Sengoku Rance again. Figure I’ll try to blitz through the true route as fast as possible for points, and then work my way up in difficulty again as I play through the other routes. It’s still probably my favorite eroge, but it is just a tad tough going directly from playing a voiced game to an unvoiced game. At least the music is catchy while stuff is going on.
Hmm, that’s a most disconcerting situation, and that’s sort of the situation I’m hoping to avoid with the Carnelian pillowcase, since I’m not sure how well preordering stuff through YJA work. Heck, I try to avoid it with eBay, and as I understand it eBay provides a ton of protection to buyers (not so much for sellers though, from what I hear). The guy who was selling the pillowcase seems to have a decent feedback score so I’m not too worried, but I’m going to feel a bit of anxiety till I’ve got the pillowcase in my hands.
Those mods definitely look really complex; I guess they have to resculpt a good bit of the figure at times. That sort of thing is definitely way beyond my skill level; heck, there was this figure I got recently that had a bit of its hair snapped off and I couldn’t find the piece – it was a preowned figure so I guess the damage had occurred before it was mailed. I figured I could just sculpt the part with Sculpey and glue it on, which is what I did, but it was quite a bit more difficult than I thought it would be, particularly since the missing part was barely more than a couple of millimeters long.
Yeah, the black dress Fate. I sometimes see it pretty cheaply on Mandarake and I think about picking it up, but it’s not super high on my list of priorities, particularly since I’ve got quite a few other things that I prefer to get first.
Yep, not a single Fate pillowcase. I’ve seen a few I liked but not enough to try to track them down on YJA. I’ve seen a ton that I kinda-sorta liked but had reservations about, including the one that HOP is re-issuing in the near future.
Yeah, Tsuki-board (or MFC) is a pretty cool site. I’m not much of a community person, though, and I think the club implementation could be better. It’s definitely great for keeping track of stuff, because sometimes I forget what I have ordered. This is particularly true for stuff I order from Amiami, since they don’t have a user account page. I really wish they’d implement one, because it’s annoying as hell to have to e-mail them and ask them to combine or separate orders.
Speaking of video games and Dizzy, I picked up Oblivion recently, since they re-released it as part of a Five-Year Anniversary edition. It’s hard to believe it’s been five years, since I’ve got in on the 360 and I’m hoping the 360 (and PS3) don’t get replaced for at least a couple years from now. I couldn’t play the 360 version because it made me incredibly motion-sick, as did Morrowind, but the PC version of Oblivion seems to be okay. I’ve been running around playing it in a somewhat immature manner. What a great game it is.
I need to play through Sengoku Rance again just to try to beat the frippin’ Orochi. None of my attempts have even come close, though; I think the best I ever did was to get it down halfway. I saw a Youtube video of a guy who beat it by switching guys in and out and I don’t even know how to get a lot of the commanders he had (like the youkai commanders). I also got a bunch of Sengoku Rance figures I have to photograph here. Hopefully I’ll get around to it soon.
What pisses me off is that from what I could understand, it wasn’t a preorder. The dude had a picture of the item posted, and immediately after it sold, he listed it again. The guy who won the second auction left feedback within a week. But I guess as cliche as it sounds, you should be careful what you wish for. I checked SMJ a couple hours after I posted and they had received it in Japan; got the invoice in the morning with the terrible 71 yen rate. What the hold up was I have no idea, and while I’m glad they got the item, it would have been nice if they had either gotten it a month ago or it went a bit longer… because now isn’t really the best time to pay. >_>
Yeah, it’s definitely out of my skill level for sure. I may try tinkering with the Saber figure, since I like it less than the Rin figure, just to see what it looks like underneath. But I’ll likely screw it up so badly that I’ll tuck it away in a box and forget about it… like the Kenshin/KOS-MOS who have broken arms waiting to be super glued.
It’s a pretty cool figure, and I really like the modifications I’ve seen done to it. Really cute.
It’s just really strange for you considering what a big Fate fan you seem to be. I have covers that aren’t outstanding because they’re of characters I really like. But I guess since covers aren’t your primary focus it makes a bit of sense.
Oh neither am I, but I do like talking about dakimakura covers. Yeah, I like Hobby Search’s system of order tracking, but it’s a shame it only keeps track of orders in the last year. I was going through it to add items to MFC and it cut up surprisingly short until I read the year limit.
Weird that it would make you motion sick. I never ran into that problem, though the Xbox version of Morrowind was incredibly buggy and without mods. You know, I’m definitely a Morrowind over Oblivion guy, but that screenshot is amazing.
I finally did beat Orochi on the last playthrough I remember. Think it was either 3 or 5 star Kill the Monkey, but I could be wrong on that. I know it was at least 1 star because after I beat the game the first time I always played on at least 1 star. It’s definitely a fight that requires a lot of preparation, and that’s why I think a freer route like Kill the Monkey was better; I don’t think it had a turn limit and if it did there was a lot less going on since you didn’t have to worry about the Demon Army or anything.
The Basic idea though is to spam your roster with as many high command point generals as possible, that have a decent level cap. It’s a pain in the ass because if I remember correctly the dungeon had 18 floors and I don’t think you were able to replenish them before fighting Orochi, but I could be wrong there. Anyhow, other than having a lot of high CP generals, you really needed to level up in the other dungeons as well.
Some of the Youkai commanders are a pain the ass to capture; I was always able to get the ninja (who was my favorite anyway), the spider chick and fox once, but I never managed to capture the Cyclops. I think all of them but the main guy and the fox can be captured in battle, you do a special event to get Masamune and you need him to get the fox, I’m pretty sure. They were a great batch of commanders, though; especially the fox, she had a really killer magic attack that hit everyone.
That’s unfortunate, particularly the way the exchange rate has crumpled in the last month. At least you got a positive resolution out of that, but it sucks when the timing is poor.
I looked around for appealing Fate dakimakura covers and I couldn’t find any that I really, absolutely want. This one is aight but I’d prefer one of her as an adult, and I’d also prefer of one in her fighting outfit, since she looks a bit like a generic blonde in casual clothes. This one is aight but not really thrilling, and it’s also relatively old so it’d probably be a bit more expensive. I’ll keep looking and see if I find anything that I really like; I might just go with the one by Briest. Incidentally, man there are a lot of bootleg covers on YJA.
It’s odd how debilitating Bethesda’s games are to me. They also clobbered a friend of mine; he resorted to taking airsickness pills to play Morrowind, but that got too expensive for him. I’m hopeful that Skyrim won’t knock me out, but then again, I’m not certain if my computer will be able to handle it very well anyway.
Yeah, I only took a few shots at the Orochi because I really did not like dungeon grinding to level people up. And now that I remember, I did manage to capture a few of the youkai commanders, but never Omachi or Masamune, so I never could unlock them at the beginning of the game. From what I understand Masamune is a really strong commander against the Orochi, and I could probably use his help.
Yeah, it’s exactly that. I’m glad it’s resolved, but the timing was really poor. 71 exchange rate is really harsh. :/
Hmm, I like both of those, actually. I especially like the art style of the first cover; I may have to take a look at the circle and see what else they’ve done. I know… you can just search for dakimakura and the entire front page is usually full of them. There’s usually 1500-2000 dakimakura covers up in the main section at any given time, and I’d say about 1000+ are bootlegs. All within the 1300-6600ish range.
That is really strange. Their games have never bothered me, and it’s even stranger that one of your friends had the same problem. You’d think it would be fairly rare, but maybe not I guess. That’s quite an extreme fix your friend took, though… he must have really liked the game. Skyrim is probably the main reason, gaming wise, that I want to upgrade my PC. I’ve been trying to keep myself as in the dark as possible so I can experience it when it comes out.
I liked the dungeon aspect of the game a bit, though all the dungeons have the same monsters (except for the last level), so it didn’t stay challenging for long. It basically amounted to using your weaker people on the lower level floors so you had action points for your high level characters when you made it to the boss floor.
The only faction bonus I never unlocked was the Takeda bonus; it was just too hard capturing all the guys in one playthrough, if I remember correctly. Yeah, I’m pretty sure he had a fairly high level cap, with maxed action points, so he was definitely a good dungeon choice.
So here’s a spot of fairly well timed news. Looks like the cover you mentioned from BW Store the other day (with amazing cell phone placement) will be up for sale on a site. Only problem is that it won’t be for sale on BW Store as far as I can tell, so you’ll probably have to go through a proxy. :/
http://boncool.jp/
Actually they have an English option on their site, and the registration page allows you to choose country. They also ship have EMS shipping according to their FAQ… this looks promising.
I know next to nothing about Skryim, since I wasn’t planning on buying it given the problems I’ve had with Bethesda’s other games. But since I can play Oblivion, I probably ought to pay more attention to it. Oblivion’s a lot of fun, even though I usually don’t really like sandbox-style games.
Hmm, thanks for the heads-up. Talking about inauspicious timing, though; I still have to pay for the Carnelian pillowcase, I’ll have to pay up front for the Nanoha pillowcase I want, and I’m expecting to have to pay for five figures in the next week or two. I’ll have to see if I’ve got any discretionary spending budget left over after all of that.
I don’t really know much about it either, short of a few minutes of video that I had watched. The little bit that I did see had my very excited. Finally be able to have a sword in one hand and a spell in the other. I just hope they find a good balance between helping newbies out and letting the “hardcore” do their thing. I definitely preferred Morrowind’s style of doing things over Oblivion, and while the fast travel system was fairly handy, it really killed a lot of the fun in exploring. I do admit that at sometimes Morrowind was a bit vague on quest details, but Oblivion’s fast track system and marking the exact quest locations on the map was a bit too much. I’d be happy if they could strike a nice balance between the two, while adding new features.
Heh, I feel you. I still have a few items to pay SMJ for, and I just won that Nymph cover last night. Then I really want to put my computer together sooner than later, but I might wait and see what type of money comes in. As it is, I’m definitely going to have to carry a bit of a balance on my card, but I think that if I were to buy all my computer components now and have all the SMJ invoices come in, I’d be a hair length’s away from my limit. I do have some money coming in soon, which will beat down the balance a bit, but it’s likely going to be early next month.
When I started the game, I spent some time running around because I didn’t know I had a map. When I found the map, I found out I could fast-travel all around the world and that was actually kind of deflating, since there’s this big, beautiful world out there but you don’t actually have to traverse much of it. I kinda felt the same thing about World of Warcraft, when they put in flying mounts; you could skip over so much of the stuff on the ground that it seemed like exploration was completely unnecessary. Not that the TBC areas were large enough to require exploration, I suppose. Still, some of my favorite memories in MMOs are from just running around seeing new sights; the big-ass bridge in the Karanas and the introductory areas of the Kunark expansion in EverQuest and running from zone to zone to get Verigan’s Fist in Warcraft particularly stand out. I don’t remember what much of the ground looks like in TBC because I was in the air for most of it.
Ouch, that sounds rough, particularly with no steady income (I presume). I’m not yet at any danger point; I still have enough money that I could quit my job and fly around the world for half a year if I so chose, but I’m trying not to go nuts with the spending. It is not helping that I keep seeing pillowcases (and figures) that I want. It’s also not helping that Canon is doing rebates this month and there is this really sexy $1200 lens that I really want, even though I’m not sure what I would use it for. I just know that I want it.
Yeah, exploration was definitely the thing I loved about Morrowind. And while it was certainly a pain in the ass sometimes, you had to find where to go by reading quest descriptions/listening to people. It was very vague at times, such as travel west from here and then east from this landmark, and so on. But it was as lot of fun, and really added to the sense that this was a massive world you could explore. Even if you gave up and jumped online to figure out where to go, it could still take some time finding the place. In Oblivion, you had that giant red arrow telling you exactly where to go.
The only area (other than graphics, of course) that I feel Oblivion really outshone Morrowind was in the guild quests; the Dark Brotherhood quest line is easily one of my favorite moment in gaming.
I’ll agree with you on BC flying, and WotLK to an extent. But I don’t think BC’s zones were all that impressive on the ground anyway. Zangarmarsh was the only zone that I found aesthetically pleasing, though I did really like the sky in Hellfire. WotLK did have a lot of cool stuff to explore. And since I was a vanilla player for 1-2 years before BC, flying mounts in Azeroth was a really cool thing. Granted some of the zones had changed tremendously, and I should have explored those thoroughly, but being able to visit all the nooks and crannies I hadn’t been to since they broke wall jumping was a lot of fun.
Yeah, not really an income steady enough to support my hobby. I do have a bit coming in here and there, but it’s more sporadic than steady. I finally applied for financial aid this year, and the amount remaining after tuition and books should save my ass, but it will still be a tight fit and I can’t rely on it since I know it will go quick. Go go $1200 lens!
Yeah, the Oblivion world feels smaller than Morrowind’s (not that I played Morrowind for very long, due to the dizziness issue). I’m spending a lot of time running around the world though, just because I want to kill stuff. I like games that give you diverse play options but I’ll be honest, 99% of the time, I’m gonna choose the kill option.
Yeah, BC’s terrain wasn’t really that pretty. I did like Netherstorm and Nagrand, though. I saw today that Blizzard finally plans to put in a customizable armor appearance feature. It’s too bad they’re a few years too late, that might almost have been enough to get me to re-subscribe … though I probably wouldn’t play it much either way.
That $1200 lens is so sexy. Feature-wise, anyway; it comes in a big white shell which I don’t find too sexy, since my camera is black and I’d rather have a matching-color lens. You know what’s not so sexy? Fuggin’ earthquakes. That scared the fuck out of me last afternoon.
Yeah, it definitely feels smaller, though I’m not sure which world really is. You’d imagine Oblivion would be bigger, but the quick travel system just cheapened the whole thing and it made me think the world was smaller than it really may have been.
Oh me too, though in games like Hitman or something, you’re definitely cheating yourself if you just go in guns blazing. A lot of the Dark Brotherhood quests are fairly straightforward in the killing, but there was one particular quest that I really liked taking the subtle approach to. Won’t spoil it if you haven’t played it yourself, but I’d highly recommend the Dark Brotherhood guild quests if you haven’t joined yet.
Yeah, I liked Nagrand the first time through, and it remained a great way to level pas that, but after I had a chance to explore every zone once, the only zone I still really liked was Zangarmarsh. Although quest wise, Blade’s Edge was probably my favorite. Remember doing it the first time on my Paladin when the graveyard was still ridiculously far away if you died in the upper areas. Only died once while questing there, since you know, i was a paladin. But it still had some really cool questing/chains.
Heh, it’s funny how one simple little feature can draw you into the game. I don’t think I’ll ever seriously get back into it myself, unless I start playing with a bunch of friends again, but I’ll probably check it out from time to time. It was fun to quest and such in Cataclysm, but that’s all I really needed to do. I would have liked raiding again, on a less serious scale, but actually looking back on my short lived Cataclysm experience it was fun to quest without worrying about anything else; almost like a single player game, which I definitely do prefer these days.
Maybe you could paint it or something? It’s surprising that they don’t have an all black model, though; you’d imagine for something that expensive they’d definitely try to cater to those who prefer a matching color scheme. Yeah, I had seen an earthquake mentioned on a forum and also saw your post (I refuse to say tweet) on Twitter. I guess that’s one generally good thing about Nevada; I can only remember one earthquake that was serious enough to notice in all the time I’ve been here. And even then it was more noise, like someone was banging on windows in the distance, that made us aware of it.
I am big on aesthetics. Which is to say, I am big on the panty plate. I was most disappointed when they provided no bikini armor in WotLK. What a bunch of wimps. I’ll fully admit that I’m interested in TERA solely because of the character designs, but I doubt that that would be enough (though I remember telling my friends I’d never play Warcraft hardcore, and I was quite wrong on that one).
Nah, I’ve seen somebody who tried to color in his white lens and it was absolutely hideous. It’s not a big huge deal, I’d just prefer black. But I remember that I still have to get that timing belt replacement done on my car so this might have to wait.
Yeah, this earthquake was scary, but not really a big deal. It would have been a really big deal if my figures had suffered more damage, though; I only had one figure that was seriously damaged and it’s not one that I care a great deal about, happily. It was mainly the suddenness of the quake and the fact that I’ve only experienced one other quake in my life (and that one was so minor I didn’t know for sure it was a quake till I read the newspaper the next day). It’s also pretty scary to think that regardless of all the preparations you make, your life can get really messed up by one act of nature and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
Hello. I was wondering if there were any other sites that still has this cover for sell. I did some searching and have found nothing so far. Any recommendations for sites to look into would be nice. Thanks.
There’s one up at Mandarake, that would be the best bet by far, I think.
Hey, I’ve got a question.
In the picture, where Nobunaga is shown with her retainers….who’s the girl on the left? Is it an official character? Because I can’t find something about her.
Or is it a fanart?
I’m not entirely certain; she doesn’t have an entry on the Oda household page on Unicorn-A’s webpage. I’m guessing she may be the girl in the back; the clothes are different, but the hair and eye color are the same. She does get a few scenes from what I can tell from the CG set, so I think she has a name, but I’m not sure what it is.