Manual Stimulation BONUS: Hello Kitty World sticker sheet

I'm a sucker for games, especially old Japanese games, that come packed with sticker sheets.

Sadly, I don't own too many of these treasured goods. In fact, I can only think of four examples at the moment: Detana!! TwinBee, Loopop Cube: Lup Salad, PoPoLoCrois Monogatari, and Rhythm Tengoku.

Four examples other than the one I'm discussing and highlighting in this very post, I mean.

Funnily enough, I didn't even realize I owned this sticker sheet until I pulled my copy of the 1992 Famicom game out of the closet to scan its instruction manual.

To my utter surprise, stuck inside the pages of the Hello Kitty World manual were the stickers you see here.

Truth be told, I'm a bit miffed this precious sticker sheet focuses entirely on Hello Kitty, aka Kitty White.

Granted, she's the star of the show--er, game--and this sheet only contains eight stickers, five of which are pretty darn small, so the lack of any Mimmy or Tippy stickers makes some sense.

Something that makes a lot less sense: none of these stickers directly refer to Hello Kitty World. (Erm, except the one at the top.) It's almost like Character Soft, the publisher of this Balloon Kid knockoff, just took a few existing Hello Kitty illustrations and slapped them onto the sheet you're ogling now.

All that said, I'd rather get a sticker sheet than not get one, so please don't take what I've written so far to be serious complaints.

See also: scans of the Detana!! TwinBee, Loopop Cube: Lup Salad, and Rhythm Tengoku sticker sheets

Nice Package! (PoPoLoCrois Monogatari, PlayStation)

I've looked upon PoPoLoCrois Monogatari, a role-playing game that was developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment and first released in Japan in the summer of 1996, with a curious eye for a number of years now.

I refrained from buying it, though, because of the language barrier. Although I was more than happy to attempt to play through Japanese RPGs as a teen, I've become less and less willing to do so as I’ve gotten older.

Or at least that’s how I felt until I returned to my Japanese studies earlier this year. Now that I’ve got the language’s hiragana and katakana syllabaries down pat (again) and I’ve started learning actual words and phrases and grammar, I’m feeling quite a bit more confident in my ability to tackle an adventure like this one.

Which should go a long way toward explaining why I finally picked up the copy of PoPoLoCrois Monogatari that can be seen in the photos scattered throughout this post a couple of weeks ago.

Although I’ve yet to start playing it, I’m planning to do just that soon. (Specifically, as soon as this night class I’ve been taking, on and off, for the last nine months wraps up in a couple of weeks.)

In the meantime, I thought I’d share a few snapshots of the game’s packaging, which, in my humble opinion, is so pretty that it deserves every whistle and catcall thrown its way.



I find the game’s cover art especially appealing, I’ve got to say—although, really, only a person with a heart of stone would consider it anything less than stunning, wouldn’t you agree?



I decided to include the photo above here, by the way, because the sticker that is its focus shows that, at some point in its life, this particular copy of PoPoLoCrois Monogatari sat on the shelves of Tokyo’s world-famous Super Potato game shop.



There’s no need to explain the preceding shot, though, is there? After all, the art that’s splashed across the top side of this game’s disc is nearly as spectacular as the art that peeks through its case—or at least that’s how I see things.

I wish I could tell you why I failed to snap any photos of the interior of PoPoLoCrois Monogatari’s instruction manual, but at the moment I’m unable to conjure up any reasons. Don’t worry, I plan on rectifying matters this weekend, so look for some of the above to be published on my Flickr photostream within the next few days.

While you wait, you likely could do worse than waste a handful of minutes ogling the lovely sticker sheet that was hidden inside the manual in question.

One of the many reasons I'm glad I finally picked up Zoo Keeper 3D: it comes with an actual manual

After months of threatening to do so, I finally bought a copy of Zoo Keeper 3D--aka one of the most overlooked Japanese 3DS games around.

You may not realize or remember this, but I've long been a big fan of the first Zoo Keeper game, released for the GameBoy Advance as Zooo.

I like the DS version well enough, too, although not nearly as much as I like the GBA "original"--mostly because I consider the dual-screened iteration to be a smidge too easy.

My slight disappointment with the DS-based Zoo Keeper is what kept me from going ahead and picking up the Japan-only 3DS sequel until now, actually. I just couldn't shake the feeling that it would leave me feeling similarly let down.

I'm going to save my first impressions of Zoo Keeper 3D for a separate post that'll be published later this week (or early next), but I can share now that my initial fears were unwarranted.

Also, after playing it for a fair bit over the last few days I have to say I'm both shocked and saddened that Zoo Keeper 3D has yet to see the light of day outside Japan.

Gaining access to it via the eShop would be especially nice, in my opinion, as this is exactly the kind of game I'd like to have on my 3DS at all times.

Rather than obsess about this title's lack of a Western release, let's focus on its packaging and instruction manual and insert, which can be seen in the photos above and below.

Sadly, the manual I gushed over in this post's header isn't as fabulous as it could've been. Where are all of the adorable illustrations of the zoo's mustachioed curator that I expected to see, for instance?

Oh, well, at least the game's plastic wrapping came with a rather cute "10th Anniversary" sticker attached to it.

See also: 'For the ninth game of Christmas, the UPS man brought to me ...'

Detana!! TwinBee x Loopop Cube: Lup ★ Salad x Rhythm Tengoku stickers

Scanning Loopop Cube: Lup ★ Salad's instruction manual last weekend--for yesterday's "Manual Stimulation" post--reminded me that stuffed inside of said manual was a small sheet of stickers featuring  this PlayStation puzzler's characters in a number of adorable settings and situations.

It also reminded me that I owned a few other sheets of stickers that were packed inside import games I purchased long ago--namely the PC Engine port of Konami's Detana!! TwinBee and Nintendo's Rhythm Tengoku (for the GameBoy Advance).

Detana!! TwinBee's sticker sheet can be seen below. I think my favorite is the one in the upper-left corner, showing Pastel cleaning WinBee's windshield, although the one in the opposite corner is awfully sweet, too.

And here, of course, is the sheet of stickers that came with my copy of Rhythm Tengoku:

Being the huge Rhythm Tengoku (aka Rhythm Heaven) fan that I am, I love all of these stickers, although I can't help but love the onion ones a bit more than the rest.

As for the Loopop Cube: Lup ★ Salad stickers: they're nice, too, aren't they? They're probably my least favorites of all the stickers shown here, but that doesn't mean I dislike them. In fact, I find the one's at the very top of the sheet to be really adorable. I'm not sure what you're supposed to do with the little labels in the lower-right corner, though. Any ideas?

See also: 'Manual Stimulation: Loopop Cube: Lup ★ Salad (PlayStation)' and '12 import games I bought in 2012 but didn't tell you about until now: Loopop Cube: Lup ★ Salad (PlayStation)'

1oddgent's Boo, Kirby and Tron stickers

In an effort to thank me for mentioning him and his art on this blog on a few occasions, artist Dan Taub (aka 1oddgent) recently sent me a pack of stickers featuring some of his awesome creations.

The subject of leftmost sticker in the image below isn't a character from a video game, although I could see him being one. (He'd seem especially at home in a brain-training or puzzle game, don't you think?) The subjects of the remaining two stickers, on the other hand, should be instantly recognizable--despite their somewhat abstract redesigns.

For those of you who are scratching your heads: Boo from the Super Mario Bros. series is the subject of the sticker in the upper-right corner of the image above, while Kirby is the focus of the bottom-most sticker.

Taub also sent me the Tron-inspired sticker seen below. I especially like the pink "1UP" that's stamped on the gal's/guy's/thing's helmet.

All of the stickers above have been printed on white vinyl sticker paper and are about three inches square. Well, except for the Tron-inspired one, which is about three-and-a-half inches by four-and-a-half inches.

If you know a surface that's just begging to be plastered with a bunch of awesome stickers, hop on over to the 1oddgent etsy shop and pick up a pack or two (or three).

See also: 'Boo-tiful, just boo-tiful' and 'I love air, too, Susumu Hori'

You kind of have to imagine the 'wakka wakka wakka' with these ...

I just came across the following image--of a Pac-Man Rub Off Game card from the early 80s--over at aeropause.com:

If my memory serves me correctly, cards like the one above were sold in packs along with "sticker cards" like these:

 
I know I collected these back in the day, but I'm pretty sure I later traded them for some Garbage Pail Kids.