Alana Dunitz

Alana has been playing videogames since she was a little girl and got her first NES, it was love at first sight! Now years later she has an immense collection of games and has set her sights on finding awesome Nintendo import games that we never got over here and that don't require needing to know Japanese to enjoy. Besides playing games, she also has transferred her love of retro video games to various forms of artwork including painting, printmaking and drawing. Check out her blog at retrogamergirl.com and follow her on Twitter @retrogamergirls and be sure to drop her a line! Oh and did I mention that she loves cats?

It Came From Japan

Happy Halloween! Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffiti

こんにちは! It’s already Halloween so I thought I would share one of my favorite Halloween games to play on the Famicom! Read More

It Came From Japan

It Came From Japan – Devil World

こんにちは! Today I’m looking at a fun little puzzle game for the Famicom called Devil World. Devil World is a puzzle maze video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Famicom by Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. A lot of people feel that it is a Pac Man clone, and in some ways it definitely does resemble it, but it’s also different in a lot of ways. It was released in Japan on October 5, 1984 and eventually in Europe on July 15, 1987 but due to the all of the religious icons in the game it went against Nintendo of America’s strict policies so it was not released here. This makes it the only game designed by Miyamoto that hasn’t been released in North America. The great thing is like a lot of his other games, you can just pick up and play without having to know Japanese to play it.
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It Came From Japan

Famicom Disk System

こんにちは! Sorry for the lack of updates lately. Started a new job, had a bunch of training then I had a vacation in Vegas. But now I’m back and ready to go! Today I’m gonna continue to talk about the Famicom, but this time focusing on the attachment known as the Famicom Disk System. The FDS system is pretty cool and plays games that look like 3.5 inch floppy disks. The beauty with this type of cartridge/game is it allows you to save your game! There were machines in a lot of stores that would allow you to erase the game on the disk you had and save a new game onto it. Which seems awesome but when you buy a game online now, even though it has a label saying it’s one game it could actually be something totally different.

It Came From Japan

Famicom vs NES

Afternoon everyone! Figured today I would do something I probably should have done from the get go, I’m going to look at the Famicom system itself and what makes it different than the grey Nintendo Entertainment System we are all familiar with. For today I’m going to focus on some of the differences between the two. Don’t want to bore you so I’ll try to make it more of a condensed version.

It Came From Japan

Ninja Ryukenden vs Ninja Gaiden

こんにちは! Afternoon everyone, thought for today we could switch things up a little bit. If you collect Famicom games I’m sure at some point you have asked yourself if it’s worth owning the NES and Famicom versions of a game. I would say in some cases you definitely should as the same game can really vary between the two systems.

It Came From Japan

Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffiti

こんにちは! Today we have an awesome side scrolling game with tons of movie references from Namco for the Famicom. It’s Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffiti! Now you may be familiar with the Splatterhouse game that recently game out on the Xbox 360, or the Sega Genesis version but this game is actually quite different. This version isn’t as creepy as its counter parts since it features super deformed characters which I think add to the game. Nothing like a chibi guy with a hockey type mask carrying a big knife/axe, this doesn’t remind me of a specific movie franchise at all. :) Like all the other games I post here on It Came From Japan, you do not need to know Japanese to enjoy it!
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It Came From Japan

Shuwatch

こんにちは everyone! I’m doing something a bit different today, I’m going to show you some game related import toys I have in my collection. Today I’m showing off the Shuwatch! You’re probably thinking, what’s a shuwatch?? It’s a shooting watch silly :p It’s actually a lot cooler than it sounds. It was developed by Hudson Soft (notice the bee logo) for kids (well, boys) to help increase their shooting speed for games like Star Force on the Famicom. It counts the number of button presses in 10 seconds. The inspiration was Takahashi Meijin (aka the guy in the Adventure Island games) who was called Meijin because he was a master. He is able to hit the button 16 times in one second, so his score on this would be 160! I’m already having problems beating my friend Josiah’s score of 129!

It Came From Japan

Holy Diver

こんにちは everyone! Today I’m bringing out the big guns, it’s about time that I tell you about one of the Famicom games that I would consider to be on my top 5 list of exclusive Famicom titles. So needless to say you should definitely check out if you have a chance. It’s called Holy Diver, and amazingly enough it actually is based on the song by Dio or the cover by Killswitch Engage.
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It Came From Japan

It Came From Japan: Go Go Ackman

こんにちは For today’s entry of It Came From Japan I am going to share a very special Super Famicom game, as it was recommended to me by JewWario who passed away suddenly last week. Today I am just going to talk about the first game in the series, but if this game interests you at all you should definitely check out all 3 games in the series which all came out for the Super Famicom.
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It Came From Japan

It Came From Japan: JaJaMaru-kun

Happy New Year everyone! This is the first It Came From Japan post of the year, and I think I have some really cool stuff in store for you! I don’t think I’ve shared this on here but I am a HUGE fan of Game Center CX. So much so that as soon as a game was announced for the Nintendo DS I knew I had to have it. The game known as Retro Game Challenge was a collection of game challenges for retro inspired games. One of the game series you get to challenge is called Robot Ninja Haggleman. As per usual the princess is kidnapped and it’s up to you to save her. Haggleman had the ability to pick up scrolls, and ninja stars to attack the enemies, but you were also able to slam doors on them to attack.

My post today isn’t about Haggleman, but it’s about the game that inspired it, Jaleco’s JaJaMaru-kun.
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It Came From Japan

Araiguma Rascal

こんにちは! Good afternoon everyone! Tonight I’m watching a Studio Ghibli movie called Pom Poko which features a bunch of tanukis (aka Japanese Raccoon Dogs) who are threatened by gigantic suburban development project called New Tama. Anyways, enough of the movie plot, the movie has got me thinking about raccoons and tanukis and games that feature them. The most obvious answer is Super Mario Brothers 3 with Mario when he eats the leaf and becomes a Tanuki, but I’m thinking something a little more unknown.

This game I came across by fluke on Youtube from watching random SuFami gameplay videos. Yes it’s sad but true, I fill up a lot of my spare time watching random game videos lol. As soon as I saw the raccoon I knew I had to get this game, he is so cute! So after a lot of searching I found a copy on eBay (for a decent price and complete in box too!), the game we are going to look at is called Araiguma Rascal (aka Raccoon Rascal).

It Came From Japan

Parodius Da!

Konnichiwa! こんにちは! (gotta show off a bit of Japanese from my university class) I hope all is going well with you. I figured for this week’s entry of It Came From Japan I would stick with the penguin theme that I kind of started in the last post with Antarctic Adventure. What do a penguin, octopus, twin bee and fighter jet have in common? They are all flyable characters in Parodius Da! This game was put out by Konami (which instantly makes it awesome) in 1990 and is available on the Famicom, Super Famicom and also for the Japanese Game Boy system. The GB version will still work on your system since the Game Boy is region free. Though keep in mind since it is the GB, that version is only 8 levels long.

I have this game for the Famicom, but the version on the Super Fami seems to be pretty much the same as the Famicom version but there are a few extra levels plus looks and sounds nicer, so if you have a choice pick up the SuFami one.
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It Came From Japan

Antarctic Adventure

For this week I have decided to pick a game based on the weather, it sounds kind of lame when I say it that way but stick with me here. It’s November now so it’s time for winter, and based on the weather here winter has definitely come. When I think of cold and snow one of the first things that comes to mind is little penguins all dressed up in their tuxedos. Apparently game developers in Japan like penguins too, based on the amount of penguin games that came out for the Famicom that we never got here. The game I’m thinking of is Antarctic Adventure starring Pentarou who went on to star in a lot of other Konami games. The really cool thing about this series that a lot of people probably don’t know is that a really popular game designer worked on it back in the day; that designer is Hideo Kojima, the man behind games like Metal Gear. He didn’t work on this game specifically, but he worked on the sequel called Penguin Adventure that was released for the MSX.

It Came From Japan

Majou-Ou

I figure since we are quickly approaching Halloween I would show you a game that was monster/horror related for today’s It Came From Japan. Today I am looking at Majuu-Ou, that doesn’t sound very scary, does it? Well, when you look at the translation and you see that it is called “King of the Demons,” then I think it seems a bit more creepy.

It Came From Japan

Godzilla: Kaijuu Daikessen

For my first It Came From Japan entry I tried to pick something special that really showed off some of the awesome import games I have gotten a chance to play in the last couple years. After a lot of deliberation I think I have found a game that is not just awesome but is very iconic for another reason. My first entry is Godzilla: Kaijuu Daikessen which was released for the Super Famicom back in 1994. Unfortunately, we never saw this game released over here in North America for the SNES even though it was shown as Godzilla Destroy All Monsters in an issue of Nintendo Power, only to dash everyone’s hopes when it was never released here.