Category: life

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Taito’s Arkanoid II: Revenge of DoH was the very first computer game I ever bought

Arkanoid II: Revenge of Doh for MS-DOS, Taito/Nova Logic (1987)
When Dad bought the family our first computer, a 286 AT computer back in the summer of ’89, I bought a simplistic, 2-button analogue computer joystick. It came loaded with a bunch of crappy shareware games, most of which used colored ASCII characters. But the first real game I bought for that computer was Arkanoid II: The Revenge of Doh for MS-DOS. It came on a big 5.25″ floppy disk, yeah!

A:\>arkanoid.exe was the command that ran it. I’d switch to the A: floppy drive and type “arkanoid” to run the game.

I had to calibrate the joystick every time I played the game, going from the top right position, click the button, go to the bottom left position, click the button, and then center and click again. That analogue joystick provided decent control for this game, which of course used a knob in the arcades to control. Later we bought a mouse for our computer, but for some reason the paddle in the game didn’t move as fluidly as it did with the joystick for some reason.

Arkanoid II was ported to MS-DOS by Nova Logic and it let you customize your own levels. Later when I got a Thunderboard (Soundblaster clone) to upgrade the sound, I ended up playing it to death all over again to experience the game with proper sound.

Another Taito game I bought for MS-DOS was Qix. I somehow do not remember ever encountering Qix in the arcades as a kid, and I would have loved playing it since it sort of reminds me of Tron.

One year for Christmas I also got Sky Shark, the famous Toaplan shmup distributed by Taito, also ported to DOS. The cover art for this game (as well as the NES version) prominently featured Flying Tigers-inspired artwork of a P-40 Warhawk attacking battleships, and Mom knew I was really into the Flying Tigers at that time. However, that didn’t survive for long because I had once left it in the disk drive by accident. When Dad booted the computer he realized a disk was in the drive, and mindlessly he took it out while the floppy was reading the disk, which ruined the data on the game. The other Taito games I had were Operation Wolf (which worked great with a 2-button mouse) and Rambo III, which was a sort of Metal Gear-inspired stealth-focused game.

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Dragon Quest campaign at Loft 2025

Last month when we went to Keyaki Walk Mall in Maebashi, I found another big display of Dragon Quest merchandise at Loft! I showed the Dragon Quest sale at Loft last year on my blog. This time it was for the release of DQ I and II.

“Welcome to the Loft Dragon Quest I & II 2025 goods campaign!”

The first things I noticed were all the plush dolls. These retro character sprite cushions look cool.

Cups and silverware.

So much random stuff. Soap dispensers, clips, pins, stickers, and so on.

A DQ raincoat! Wild.

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I got to cuddle a meerkat at the pet shop in Maebashi!

There’s a pet shop in Maebashi called Wing 21 where Mayu buys crickets to feed to her beloved pet, Kuromaru. There are two meerkats in cages there and every time we go there, I call out to the two meerkats, “Little guys!” They get SO EXCITED to see me every time. So this time the pet clerk lady asked me if I’d like to hold one. My facial reaction alone was enough for her to know that I really wanted to. So, I got to snuggle and smooch this little meerkat. SO CUTE! I want one! But, no pets are allowed in our apartment. Plus these little guys have gotta be super expensive. They’ve been there for a couple of years now and they do not have a home yet. Kinda sad. There was a third one, but that one must’ve been sold about 3 years ago. She didn’t recommend that I hold the other one, because it is too “high tension.” So I guess it gets too excited and acts up if you hold it. It was pretty jealous that I held the other one.

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A Daiso store in Chandler, Arizona

One of the places I visited with friends in the Phoenix area is a new Daiso in Chandler! It provides an identical experience to a typical Daiso in Japan. Items just cost more than 100 yen, of course. When we used to live in Arizona, these types of items were available at Asiana Market and other Asian stores, but now Daiso officially exists in Arizona. Wow.

Walking into the store, it looks so much like a typical Daiso store.

Lots of neat crap for kids, of course. I wasn’t expecting to find Touhou merchandise!

Gudetama and Cinamarroll stuff too.

Yep, this is typical Daiso goods! Straight from Japan.

Price conversion charts are posted about the store to let people know how much the items cost in US dollars.

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Kuroda Toy Store in Maebashi

Mayu discovered a store called Kuroda Toy Doll （黒田人形店）in Maebashi’s Central Shopping Arcade on the internet and on Saturday we went there to check it out. Shoutengai （商店街）are covered shopping arcades and a tradition of Japan. Unfortunately, sometimes these shopping arcades have grown unsuccessful over the years with empty real estate. In English they call this one Maebashi Rose Avenue and this is where Kuroda is located. We’ve only ever been to this shopping arcade once before, when we happened to be in the area during the Tanabata Festival in July several years ago.

Kuroda specializes in traditional toys, so basically nothing which involves video screens. The first thing I noticed upon entering was their selection of Tomica cars.

Misato’s car from Evangelion.

Macross and Gundam Tomica!

Back to the Future Part III and Castle of Cagliostro cars. I bought the BttF III Delorean with the ’50s tires at Village Vanguard earlier this year. I hadn’t seen the one with train wheels until now.

A nice, modest selection of plastic models was there. Here’s the Gunpla selection. I bought the F91 Gundam kit at this store.

Here are car, ship, castle, and other plastic models.

An RC Delorean from Back to the Future! I’ve never seen this before.

There were many older anime and game figures. Here’s Kasumi from Dead or Alive and Mai from King of Fighters.

Plenty of traditional, wooden toys too. A meow-meow tower and… a toy for Klingons? Oh never mind… that would be “Qapla,” not “Kapla.”

There were so many different toys there, such as kendama, plush dolls, and so on. My daughter Ulan wanted the bullet plushy from Super Mario Bros and I got the F91 Gundam model. It’s a neat store.

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Coming of age in the 1990s

While I was born in the ’70s and consider myself a child of the ’80s, I came of age in the ’90s. I began high school in 1990 and graduated college in December 1999. Rayon shirts with neon-colored, geometric designs buttoned up to the top of the collar. Going from dialing into local BBSes to logging onto the internet through a local ISP. $1 Whoppers at Burger King. Caller ID box next to the family telephone, but no answering machine, and the phone tag that ensued. The unfortunate death of New Wave and Shoegaze music at the hands of Grunge. Reading Star Wars novels and that sense of excitement for the Star Wars series we had before Greedo shot first. The popularity explosion of coffee houses. A bubble economy of the dot com era that defied all economic rules. Buying a Super Nintendo, Sony Playstation, and Sega Saturn. Struggling to find love as well as myself, and the heartbreaking journey that entailed. Calling the girl I liked but getting her moody little sister who probably never told her I called. And best of all, writing letters to my pen-pal in Japan whom I proposed to in January 2000, then married a year later. I was a kid in the ’80s, but became a man in the ’90s. Check out this video and reminisce of the golden decade of the ’90s.