February 22, 2003 - 12:35 AM
Wes Ehrlichman

Since I've been in Japan I've had several opportunities I probably wouldn't have had in the states. Not just Japanese things either. Strange things from another planet. Finnish things.

A long time ago when I was but a wee mallrat who visited Electronics Boutique and Software Etc. every spare moment of his time I ran across a new type of game magazine. If you're into games you might be interested to know that the Software Etc. I found the magazine in was in the far back of a Barnes and Noble bookstore. That probably dates the story pretty far back as I haven't seen a software store in the back of a bookstore in years. It was a time when Lemmings was the most popular game on computer and Street Fighter II was only available on the Super Nintendo by importing it from Japan.

This particular magazine had Terminator for the Sega CD on the cover, but instead of a prominently pictured Arnold there was a strange blue TV headed man on the cover. This magazine was called Diehard Gamefan. At first I was a little apprehensive. How could anything be better than EGM? I thought. But I picked it up and flipped through it anyway. The layout was really good (at the time) and the people knew about games I had never even heard of. Some stuff that would probably never make it out of Japan! (actually a lot of them didn't and at the present moment I can probably pick up a lot of these games at the corner store for about 50 yen...)

Strangely enough, I remember the one thing that got me to purchase the magazine. It seemed like they must have had spies everywhere because in one section of the magazine they mentioned something about a sequel to Turtles in Time for the SNES that would be four players! This game was probably never even in the planning stages, because there were never any pictures of it or mention of it again in any magazine. The game still hasn't been made, but the fact that it was in print made me really want the magazine. I threw down my $4 and picked it up. I read it cover to cover endless times, and I continued to do this with each and every issue. Even when I had a subscription and would receive my issues 4 months late. Even when they accidentally printed racist propaganda in a section of the magazine where a review was supposed to go. Even when they tried to move into strategy guides and failed miserably. Even when there was a 6 month wait between issues. Even when... well you get the picture. It wasn't always easy being a gamefan fan.

Strangely enough this amazingly run magazine died out eventually. Its legend lives on in magazines all over the world though. These magazines have even learned from Gamefan's mistakes! (except for Play, who have yet to send me a single issue of the overseas subscription I ordered 6 months ago)

If you've been following what I said until now good. If not this is where it jumps into the present. One guy named Kevin, who used to work for the online portion of Gamefan started a personal homepage called Videowrestling. This was actually one of the major influences of my website, but it's not immediately obvious. The amount of stuff they talk about on the actual site can be a little slow sometimes, but the messageboard is always pretty active, and several ex-gamefan staffers often post messages to keep up with the old crew. I post there a lot too, and Gamefan's ex-European corespondent Thomas, who recently started a magazine in Finland, contacted me about writing an article on the Japanese gaming scene for his magazine Pelaaja. I think this means Playah in Finnish. As in, "What up Pelaaja. You best keep yo' hands off my biyaaach." In fact, I think that's an actual Finnish sentence. (It's very possible that after that I won't be writing for the magazine any more... :-)

At any rate, this picture is here to give you guys at home a taste of what the Finnish magazine looks like, followed by my English text that Thomas so kindly translated (and hopefully edited the crap out of).

Japan is a very print based society. The percentage of the population that reads the newspaper is higher than anywhere else in the world, as is the percentage of comics (manga) sold, and weekly magazines exist for things that don't even have monthly magazines in other parts of the world. Video game based print actually takes up a large amount of space in many bookstores, with everything from weekly game magazines, to video game based manga, to strategy guides, art books, and even books that trace the history of popular gaming franchises.

The most popular gaming magazines are weekly Famitsu and biweekly Dorimaga, both of which have spin-offs for specific consoles such as Famitsu PS2. Despite some of these magazines' frequency, the coverage is more professional than most, and things like exclusive first looks at games, and omake (free bonus stuff) that is shrink-wrapped into the pages are frequent. The coolest of the more recent omake was a free music CD of the live Smash Bros. Concert, which was packaged in the 550 yen Famitsu GC, but most system-specific magazines regularly feature memory card stickers bound into the pages. Game magazines aren't the only ones that get scoops on new games though. Sometimes popular comic magazines that have little or nothing to do with games will break some of the biggest announcements. Last month, the infamous first picture of Dragon Quest VIII was revealed not through a game magazine, but rather through Shounen Jump Magazine, the largest selling weekly manga anthology.

Speaking of manga anthologies, these 600+ page weekly or monthly comic magazines are very big here. One of the smaller ones, V-jump, is a mixture of manga anthology and game magazine, and they often have the most coverage of games based on TV animation. The manga in it can be anything from a story about a Dragon Quest slime that dresses up as a knight and fights evil, to a side story from the popular anime-turned video game One Piece. Of course you can also find manga in self-contained form, and almost all of the most popular games have spawned a manga counterpart. Mario, Kirby, Rockman exe. (Mega Man Battle Network), .hack, Xenosaga, and Guilty Gear X mangas can all be found in local bookstores.

The strategy guides also work a little different than in the rest of the world. Rather than having a game's strategy guide come out the same day as the game, strategy guides for Japan's bigger games come out in stages. Before the game is released there is a pre-game strategy guide/art book that allows you to get acquainted with the characters and settings. Anywhere from a few weeks to a few months after a game is released there will be a post-game strategy guide that will give away most everything. Then if the game is big enough there will be a strategy guide of biblical proportions that will detail everything in the game right down to the blood types of the bosses. When I was looking for a Suikoden III guide I had to decide which of the 7 guides to pick up. All of them were official, and five of them looked like they were from the same publisher.

And then there are the books that go into detail about a game series. There is a book about Capcom fighters that traces the evolution of everything from the fighting systems, to the characters' stories, to the sheets that go around the screens of the arcade cabinets. There is also one for the Final Fantasy series. The Final Fantasy series is so popular that there is also a 3 DVD set that celebrates and explains the series' components visually. A similar DVD that follows the Zelda series up until and including the Wind Waker should be on the shelves by the time you read this as well. In fact, if you are really into any game made by a Japanese developer, chances are there are several books and merchandise about it here in Japan. There is so much paraphernalia that even an ebay buyer wouldn't be able to find it all. So remember, if you ever make it to Japan be sure to bring a hefty wallet and a lot of space in your luggage for books.