Yes, believe it or not something about Xeno and Xenogears no less!
Finding any of the Xenogears items is next to a miracle these days
and this is more or less a list of everything I have found
this year, and it is a lot more than I expected to find,
some of them are items that I have never seen for sale before.

First up, 5 of the 8 laminated character cards, I only had 2 before so this leaves
me with one missing…

Another card, phone card this time, not that rare but since it has Elly on it
it is quite sought after by fans, finally my turn to get it.

These are just insane. I have looked forever and everywhere to find them,
a set of three mini guides released together with the V-jump magazine.
The really are mini, about 20 pages each, no larger than a game manual.
I probably paid around 10 times more than the real guide costs…
Crossing this of the list was a real relief.

Another thing in the impossible category, a set of Xenogears stickers!
I like to say that they also cost me a fortune and in the world of stickers
they probably did but still in the range of a new game so it’s all
relative I guess. Let’s stick them everywhere!

Lastly I just want to mention this one, a really small Fei pin, (about 1,5 inches).
I have never seen the other pins in the set for sale but I have seen them in
other collections and really hope to find them all, probably the hardest part
about completing the Xenogears collection and I will pay a
good price if anyone happens to have them!?

There have been some intense gaming lately and here are
some short summaries. I had to borrow a few of the pictures
from the INTERNET but hopefully no one will mind.

-10 Energy Breaker-

Ah, I have been looking forward to play this for years. Ever since I found out
that it includes a song from Lufia…and since I saw the gorgeous graphics to.
It is always a good sign when you see a SNES game released in 1996,
the few people who still made SNES games by then knew what they did.
I am so glad that the fan translation got completed for this game, it was
quite a large task to do since the text often shows up in “bubbles” of
different size and there is a lot of text outside of the story that is
easy to miss, great work!

I don’t feel like explaining the combat in detail but it is a classic
isometric strategy game with a somewhat odd system to learn new abilities,
once you understand how it works, it works fine.
Story is good and also remind me a bit of Lufia (both made by Tatio),
music is also good to great, hehe. The only real problem with the game
is the turn limit on battles… every battle have a limited amount of
turns and if you don’t beat the enemy within that limit, it is game over.
This not a problem in the first half of the game but by the end it is a
real pain and I am thankful that I played on an emulator, phew.

-11 Ittle Dew-

A small Zelda “clone” with an interesting twist. The references are of course
everywhere and they make no secret about it. The interesting part is that you
can beat the main “temple” of the game in more than one way depending on
how good you are at solving the puzzles.
Not much to say really, a nice little game and for me the best part was the
option to play in swedish, you never get to visit Fiskbulleberg in
other games, haha!

-12 Metal Saga-

Another PS2 RPG bites the dust! I actually had no idea what to
expect in this game, it is quite rare to see a copy of it in Sweden,
VERY few imported it and I don’t know anyone who has played it,
if so they have not mentioned it at least…

Starting the game you will be greeted with a quite strange intro,
nothing new in RPGs though, so I hit new game, watch a small conversation
with my mom and get to choose between two options, apparently I choose
wrong since the credits begin to roll… hahaha!
Next time I pick the other option and soon realizes that this is an
open world RPG… made in Japan… on the PS2…
AND released in english. Quite a surprise.

The world is open and you can go where ever you want but the
process is like this: Find a town, fight monsters until you can afford
the best tank parts the town has to offer (yes, you mostly drive around in
and fight with your tanks), buy the parts, equip them and find “outlaws”
which are wanted bosses that give a lot of extra cash for the next upgrades.
Repeat.
Somehow this is quite fun and once you understand how everything works it
is a very solid RPG. Sure the graphics are not great, no voice acting etc
but it does have a FAST FORWARD button for all battles that makes
Bravely Default battles look like a snail, haha.
The battles are classic turn based RPG battles with the addition that you
can go in and out of your tanks (a bit like Xenogears).

This game almost need a full review to cover everything, at least you get some
kind of picture from this… managing your tanks and searching the world for
outlaws is basically what you do until you stumble upon the little
“main” story there is.

I did like the game but since there is just so many good RPGs on PS2 I
can’t really recommend this unless you have played them all…

-13 Dragon Quest Heroes-

I thought that this would get old and repetitive fast but I did enjoy it
all the way to the end, the battles worked really well and switching instantly
between characters is the best, the only sad part is that you can’t bring
them all at once, only four at a time and since the main character, Yangus and
Jessica where a must for me it only left one spot open for
experimenting with the others…
oh well, the worst part for me was not being able to zoom out when you fight
larger enemies, the best part was Healix the cureslime, I can’t believe
he got to me…

-14 Uncharted 4-

I didn’t expect to play this anytime soon and I already felt done with the
series but then my sister bought it and of course I had to borrow it!

First of all, the environments are just crazy both from a technical and
aesthetic view. I never thought I would see the level of detail that is put
into especially the vegetation of the game, this is as far away you can come
from the classic “MMO grass” where you just put to textures of
grass in a cross, haha.
If you are standing among the bushes and grass in this game and look down
you will first see a layer of plants with large leaves that overlap and think,
what a clever way of hiding the ground, but no, if you look beneath that
you will also see hundreds of actual grass straws blocking any view
from a boring ground texture!
It may seem a bit specific but seeing this and moving around in that
vegetation was just a level of detail I never thought we would see
in anything other than a tech-demo.

The environments alone is probably reason enough to put this
as number one in the series after all.
The pacing of the game and especially battles are much
better than in previous titles but without spoiling anything it felt like
something was missing in the story, it did have some really good scenes
but I was expecting something more from this “last” of adventures.

I really wanted to write something but this will just be a short one.
There is just so much I want to do including something new with the
SFC-section and of course make the Xeno collection easier to navigate.
My fellow collector at: https://wingsofhepatica.wordpress.com/
just updated that site and I love how it turned out, really easy to
navigate the four different collections and get a good sense of
the size of each collection, feel free to take a look!

Besides that I also have a new and far to big cleaning project that I will have to get back to… A few beaten games that I want to write about etc, puh!

Anyway, the 1% refers to the games that I received today, I didn’t plan to get any of these games right now but when the price is right:

My PS4 “collection” just doubled in size, haha. I have beaten Brothers before but the other two will be a good warm up of the console before Star Ocean is released!

Umm, a good start to a SFC strategy collection?…

Yes, this the one item that I mentioned earlier, the Seiken Densetsu 3 demo!
It should be a big milestone for any SFC collector and especially
RPG collectors to finally have all three demos, Chrono Trigger,
Romancing Saga 3 and Seiken Densetsu 3.

At this point it was more important to finally add a complete copy than finding one in “perfect” condition, almost all copies are more or less damaged anyway,
It’s a bit hard to see the damage when the protective case is in place but overall I am very happy to finally have it:

I did test the game and just like in Chrono Trigger you get three different save slots to show of different parts of the game including the intro of all six characters, I don’t know if it has any unique content like Chrono does
but still really cool!

I planned on updating the SFC-section during the weekend but I ended up with another console cleaning instead, a few controllers are now fit for use again including a really nice wireless PS2 controller and also I opened up a gamecube for the first time, there was a lot of parts:

I managed to put it back together again and thanks to the cleaning it actually worked too, success!

This is just a short post and not really the item I mentioned earlier but I was just so happy to finally add something new to the SFC collection!

The game of the day is Esparks, one of the last missing titles, quite rare and not to famous but far from impossible to find, I was just waiting for
“the right copy”.

I am glad to finally have it and in a really nice condition:

I beat the game last year and a good description would be a mix of Zelda and Secret of Mana, not as good as those two but a decent game with some of the worst backtracking I have seen, phew.

Just some printscreens I took:

It has been a while since the last post, there hasn’t been much to report
regarding the collection lately since most of my money is spent
on a new computer… a boring but necessary investment.
Hopefully I will have something interesting to show in the
coming weeks atleast and of course the upcoming
Star Ocean 5 Collectors Edition is pre-ordered!

Another reason for the lack of posts is the trip I made two weeks ago,
I made the trip to meet up with some old “internet friends”, quite strange
to finally meet them after almost 9 years!
I don’t really like long trips or meeting a lot of “new” people at once
but I am still glad that I made the trip and it turned out to be a
successful one in the end! A few interesting conversations, some odd
games we tried out and I finally beat Dragon Quest IX thanks to
all that traveling time! Wo!

As the title says I finally grew tired of my old LEGO city and
DEMOLISHED it, usually I grow tired of my own creations quite fast but
this one has been with me for quite some years.

After sorting out all the pieces the shelf was ready to house the items
that I originally had in mind when I built it:

The console boxes! I don’t really collect them but they have become
quite a few over the years and I don’t want to fill up the game room.

I’m not 100% satisfied with the setup but for now it is something
like a Nintendo VS Sony corner.

I realized that the blog is already a year old and I still haven’t put up a single picture of the actual gaming room.
Yes, it is not the same as the game room! I sadly play very few games in the game room at the moment…

Anyway, enjoy some pictures of the place where I actually play:

Welcome in!

The room is quite small and this is the best overview I could get, so that is where the 10 foot Lego city was hiding!

The left wall is where I store most of my disc based games, a few knickknacks, controllers etc.

In the corner behind the couch is where I store my “often used” cartridge games as well as the “for sale” cabinet and some console boxes.

There is also three of these wardrobes, this one holds all my extra consoles, controllers and accessories.

There is a bit of a mess since I haven’t really cleaned up the cables since I added the WiiU and PS4, there is a PS2 in the dark right corner and a xbox360 to the left of the WiiU.

Lastly, this is how the shelves look in a close up, it’s those cheap Ikea shelves,
I removed the middle part, added wheels and a board to the back
of the shelves.

I made this entire setup a few years ago but sadly
it didn’t really work as planned, I originally planned to have three of those
computer setups (my brother and sister usually visited and worked at the
computers back then) and put wheels on everything so it would be easy to
move around but these days I really only use one computer and
moving around the console shelves is impossible anyway since all
the cables are interconnected…
For now the room works but I really would like to make a new setup that
could hold ALL consoles and maybe give the computer a more dedicated place.
The extra chairs really need to go either way.

Thanks for looking!

I have more or less spent all “play time” this month on Trails in the sky
on the PSP (it’s still not over) but I had to take a short break when
the fourth game in the Momodora series was released.

Since I haven’t really mentioned them earlier I might as well make a small post about them all.

All four games are really short and inspired by Castlevania/ Cave Story etc,
it might seem easy to make a small game like these ones but setting limits
and not make the projects into something bigger is actually really hard and
something the creator “rdein” have mastered by now.

Sadly I can’t really recommend the first game, it feels like the early project that
it also is and it is far from polished. Of course, the core is good and many
of the weapons are fun to experiment with plus you might want to
follow the little story there is.

Both the first and second game is free to download, while the first one feels
like a linear “Cave Story clone” the second evolves to be a bit more unique
and also adds the classic Castlevania map:

This really is the short version of a Castlevania, it took me less than
2 hours to get 100% but luckily all four games have more to do after
you beat them, different endings, challenges etc.
The “camera” / transition is a little odd this time since it scrolls
half a screen at a time but that is just a minor flaw and since
it is a free and short game you should try it!

Next up is Momodora III. This is more or less a polished combination
of the first two games, it is linear but with the option to
backtrack to find some secrets or just enjoy the environments once more.
Combining different items with passive and active effects is
a big and fun part this time!

Lastly we have the newly released Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight.

I was looking forward to this but was still surprised to see it
released so soon. This is definitely the pinnacle of the series and
rdein have really evolved his game making skills. Everything from
graphics, animations etc to music and level design is on top!

Games like this is the very reason I finally turned to the dark side
(PC games, hehe) a few years ago, short games like this just
don’t make it to the consoles and it would be quite
sad to miss out on some of them.

Well, something like that anyway, this is most of my recently added items:

The collectors edition of Bravely Second (PAL), I still haven’t started the game yet but I really needed to get this on the release. I remember how surprised people was over the size of the Bravely Default box and I thought we would be prepared this time but somehow it was still a surprise
to see a monster box like this! I really like that it includes a full 300 pages artbook instead of the “usual” 50 pages. I do look forward to starting the game soon, I just need to finish the second half of Trails in the Sky on my PSP first.

Next up are some more boxes, Unlimited Saga to the PS2 RPG collection of course, I have been really bad at updating how that collection is coming along but I will try to do an update soon. I have become a bit sidetracked, sometimes other items just pop up that you need to get.
The Hakuoki box feels like a closure to the “PSP boxes collection” even if it’s not an RPG I still wanted to add it, the same goes for Sakura Wars.

I FINALLY added both the Nier original soundtrack and the Tribute album, as I have said plenty of times already it includes some of my favorite tracks and being able to listen to them in the best possible quality is a must!
As a bonus I also added the Legend of Mana Soundtrack to the collection, really beautiful and some extra fun since they have printed the swedish lyrics to the ending song all over the cover, they have of course made some printing
mistakes and also run out of space at the end and just ended the lyrics in the middle of a word, haha! Also splendid to listen to of course!

Close up on the Mana Soundtrack and swedish lyrics.

Lastly, a friend was nice enough to sell me this of all items! Just the empty box to complete my US SNES Jr! I never thought I would be able to find this without getting a complete set, it also happens to be in the best of conditions! Thank you again, I am really happy with this!

That’s all for now, but as you can see, quite the sidetrack from the PS2 collecting…

This is it, the final of these posts, time to reveal the last two items in my
Xeno collection!

I admit that I have been stalling a bit with these final items and it feels a
bit empty to not have any secret stashes left but I did promise to put
everything up and that was more or less the entire reason to create this blog.
Oh well, I will keep updating with future finds, keep organizing and
adding more info about everything but I must say that finally getting
these two items felt like a big milestone and there is not much left to
collect after all, I mentioned some big purchases last year and one was
Chrono Trigger and this was another:

It’s the Xenosaga I promotional Standee used in some stores back when
Episode I first was released in the US!!
When I checked my history recently it turns out that I have bugged the seller
about this for almost four years, hehe. But neither me or the seller was in
any hurry about this since we both knew it would be a pain to ship but
suddenly the time had come and I am extremely happy and grateful that
this finally is part of the collection!

Oh, I did say two items:

Not only the Episode I Standee but also the one from Episode II!!!
Sadly Episode III didn’t get one, luckily that means I don’t have to
sell my soul to get it.
I really love both of the standees, EPI is cool since it is a diorama with
different layers and of course have the better art but EPII is triangular
and you can view it from all three sides (plus, you can actually move it.)

The second of the three sides, this is probably the most common
art used in US promotion for the game.
A bit strange why Margulis just stands there, haha.

The final side, okay, all of the art is overused but still, having it on
a large triangle shape like this makes it four times as cool!

I suspect that I will grow tired of these two taking up half the game room
and blocking other games but for now they are the best,
of course they have a bit of damage since they have been used in stores over
10 years ago and also been transported over the world but just finding these
at all is a next to impossible task, minor flaws like that is nothing that
bothers me this time, just having them is more than fine.

A final funny detail is how the first thing I bought from the seller was this
mini version of the standee and the final thing was the large version, haha.

Thanks again!