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My nerd cave late at night, updated August 2024.

I took a photo of my nerd cave late at night, two years ago. I have a better camera this time. I also have added more stuff since then, like my light-up Starship Enterprise atop my monitor. This is a better view of the iron bead pixel art on the wall.

A closer look at my Pac-Man light. It’s actually LEDs, made to look like a neon sign.

My Pac-Man lamps, with a Dragon Quest Slime in between, atop my Megadrive game collection.

My blue paper lantern now lights up the far corner of the nerd cave.

My Aliens and Empire Strikes Back posters, and to the left side are my Record of Lodoss War action figures.

My video gaming pillow collection: Megadrive, Saturn, and Dreamcast cushions, pillows and tissue covers, as well as Pac-Man pillows. Ulan likes to plop on these pillows and chill out. I’ve shown the Sega stuff from Shimamura previously on this blog.

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Dragon Quest campaign at Loft 2024

Tonight we went to Keyaki Walk Mall in Maebashi and at Loft there was a big selection of Dragon Quest goods. Neat stuff.

Plenty of Slime plush dolls and other items.

Sofubi figures.

“Paper theater.” I wonder what these are?

This slime cushion looks comfortable.

CUTE.

So much neat crap, like pens and rulers.

The pen was tempting, but I bought the sticker sheet and roll of tape instead. My daughter Ulan isn’t has big into Dragon Quest as she used to be a few years ago. From when she was in elementary school, she especially played the Slime Adventures games on the GBA, DS, and 3DS so much. She also played the heck out of DQ9 on the DS and read the manga over and over again when she was younger. Now she doesn’t get as excited over Dragon Quest stuff like she used to. Oh how kids change…

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“Fun Fun Cup” Cup Noodle arcade game

Mayu and I went to a game center today and we played this Cup Noodle game called Fun Fun Cup. Insert 100 yen and the game releases colored plastic balls which you toss into the cup. the lid opens and closes… sometimes fully open, sometimes partially open. We scored 53 balls in 60 seconds.

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Famicom gachapon at Mandai

The Mandai Shoten store in Maebashi has a Famicom gachapon machine. For 200 yen, you can receive a random Famicom game. You never know what you will get! How exciting! What could it be? Pac Man? 1943? Arkanoid? Dragon Quest? Tetris? ZANAC?

My friend Lou got Derby Stallion, the boring-as-hell horse race simulator. Oh joy.

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Space Invaders Frenzy

Unfortunately, game centers in Japan have become increasingly boring due to the lack of actual games. Even the Purikura (“Print Club”) photo booths are boring as while 20 years ago they were a fun way for friends to have pictures taken together, they are apparently now targeted at young girls who aren’t old enough to wear makeup and these things detect your eyes and add make-up, make the eyes freakishly big, etc. The tourist-y Purikura booths were the best, so if you went to Tokyo Tower you could have your friends get a picture taken with Tokyo Tower inserted behind you, etc. Now they just make you look like some anime freak with creepy eyes. To think that girls these days actually appreciate how these photo sticker booths treat their appearances is bewildering.

The UFO catcher claw-arm prize games can only be entertaining for so long. Most of the time the claws just caress the prizes, or maybe they will pick them up, only to drop them clumsily. I’m sure it’s all on purpose.

Space Invaders Frenzy provides a fun gaming experience that cannot be replicated at home. It is a retro throwback to the original Space Invaders, but you control it with rapid fire gun turrets, picking up power-ups to defeat the invaders. It’s pretty fun.

I recorded this at the Taito Game Station in Lirica Mall in Maebashi a couple of years ago.

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I tried a CRT shader for the first time in Retropie which adds scanlines. It makes Blazing Star on Final Burn Alpha look nice.

You may need to click each image to see the images in a larger scale to truly see the effect, since WordPress tends to shrink images to fit.

For scanlines/shaders, you’ve gotta go into RetroPie Setup. From there, Configuration/Tools -> Config Edit -> Config Basic libretro emulator options. Now here you can choose to apply the shader to ALL of the emulators (option 0) or do it for individual emulators. I’m using Final Burn Alpha, so I went to Configure additional options for fba. Option 3 is Video shader enable (3). Click that and enable “True.” Next is Video shader file (4). I chose crt/crt-hyllian.glslp . You can choose it with the glow (crt/crt-hyllian-glow.glslp) to add that aged CRT look. I think there are others that will mimic a curved monitor’s surface. Tinker around and see what you like.

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Murtop, a clever neo-retro ’80s-style arcade game on Steam

I recently discovered a game publisher called Flynn’s Arcade (awesome name!). Basically, the game is a cross between Dig Dug and Bomberman. You play as a bunny rabbit that poops bombs. And no, I’m not being silly. the game actually says that you poop bombs by pressing the button!

The object of the game is to kill all of the enemies on screen before the timer runs out, and you get bonus points for eating the four carrots on each screen. Press the button to drop a bomb behind you. It’s not like Bomberman where you drop a bomb right where you are, but rather behind your bunny. The delay is very swift, so you must move quickly. You can also dislodge rocks to have them fall on the enemies. Points multiply when you kill more than one enemy.

The emulated CRT scanlines are great in this game. Sometimes these faux retro games go overboard with the scanlines, but they look nice in this game. The game is available for Steam OS, so it runs natively on Linux and Steam Deck. Last year, I discovered Annalynn. Murtop is another such fantastic neo-retro arcade game. Play it or else you suck!