Game spinoff products seem to be in decline

[Don]

I went to Kinokuniya Bookstore today to try to find some pointless stuff to waste money on, but wasn't able to find anything really useful. The only music CD they have for games was Final Fantasy 12 which I wasn't interested in. The gaming books seem to be all on Sengoku Basara 3 for some totally unfathomable reason. It used to be that you can expect even a 'how to beat XYZ game' from Japan to be pretty packed with illustrations and useful info. I guess the later stuff is unnecessary due to the Internet but at least the picture is cool, but we don't got that anymore. In fact it seems like the American based hint books are better now. It seems like game music is in a decline since I see nothing even being sold at the store. I suppose you can blame it on piracy or iPod but it really seems like there hasn't been any game that features an awesome soundtrack like say, Chrono Trigger, which is likely to remain the gold standard for a game OST. Heck, the quasi recent Xenosaga CD are way inferior and I don't even see them ever being sold in the first place, even though it's composed by the same guy.

I remember picking up Star Ocean 2's illustration guide by Mayumi Azuma for like $30 that's like 150 pages of color illustration. Now it'd be a good deal to get something with 5 pages of color illustration. Even in its closed related cousin, i.e. Anime books, I picked up some new Eva illustration for like $50 and it had like 3 pictures of Asuka and 2 pictures of Rei and that's it. What has the world come to?

I ended up buying a Touhou sourcebook for $30 which at least had a cool cover (and only the cover). At this rate, I think I'll have to buy the American hint books. I feel like the picture where you got Fry with the caption "Here take my money" except nobody seems to want it.

[Zeus]

Have you checked Amazon? They have a surprising amount of that stuff

[Don]

Even stores likes Barnes and Nobles have a surprising amount of this stuff translated, but I'm not talking about whether something is carried or not. It seems like you just don't get as good a deal as you used to. For example I bought Xenogears Perfect Works and I'm sure it was stupidly overpriced but it's this huge book with like 500 pages of information on everything from unit of measurement in Xenogears to the importance of various Miangs in history, and of course a lot of neat art. Now you pay $50 and it probably comes with 5 pages of color illustration and rest of the stuff you can find on Gamefaqs (and no, you sure weren't going to find the importance of various Miangs in history on Gamefaqs).

I don't see game music OST arrangement/mixes anymore either. I know 99% of the time they're just total ripoffs but I assume there's supposed to be a market for them. I actually really like my Xenogears arranged music and even the Final Fantasy arranged stuff (which really isn't as great as people think) is no more overpriced than the generic OST. I guess this can be blamed to iPod but those things always struck me as a collector's item anyway. Chrono Trigger OST was like $100 and even before MP3 existed it was pretty obvious that it's probably not worth that much money, but if you're a fan you bought it anyway. Then again, I haven't heard of a game OST where you just have to have for a long time, and I guess it's possible music requires a stroke of genius and we've used them all up somewhere around the SNES/PSX era.

I have all the Lunar sourcebooks and I don't even like Lunar at all, but all the sourcebook were great deals. Today the best deal I can find is probably Slam Dunk - 10 Days after, probably cost like $60 for 5 pages of something a guy scribbled on a chalkboard (I already saw it scanned).

The funny thing was in the American section of the bookstore they have a Megaman art collection that was in English and that was a pretty good deal ($40 for 200 pages of art), though they were western styled so they're not my cup of tea (though I bought it anyway, because it's Megaman). There was a different Japanese bookstore that sold a ton more sourcebooks but they're literally games from 10 years ago, so I guess there isn't much market for them

[Don]

I went back to my Xenogears Perfect Works, and for example there is a single drawing of Midori and Primera (along with Maria). Do you even know who these characters are? I don't think I've ever seen a fanart for Midori and not too sure about Primera (maybe she shows up with Billy Lee Black). But there's a drawing for them in Xenogears Perfect Works. Of course the book was way overpriced but you can tell they tried to make it look like it was worth your money so I'm fine with that. The recent stuff I bought, you usually can only five 5 pictures of even the most popular character, and they sure won't have drawings of characters with pretty much no significance.

[Julius Seeker]

It depends on the type of product. There's still Mario and Donkey Kong candy, pez, gummies, and that sort of stuff at any corner store. I'm pretty sure there's lots of Pokemon stuff around too. Not to mention Spyro action figures all over the place - even if they are tied into a game.

[Don]

It depends on the type of product. There's still Mario and Donkey Kong candy, pez, gummies, and that sort of stuff at any corner store. I'm pretty sure there's lots of Pokemon stuff around too. Not to mention Spyro action figures all over the place - even if they are tied into a game.

I see a lot of those stuff but I never thought those are good value. There was once a time where $30 could get you 100 pages of art. Now it seems like getting 10 pages would be a good deal.

The stuff I look for are more like what you'd normally expect in a Collector's Edition of whatever. They're not cheap but it can be pretty fulfilling. Recently I've been burned quite a few times.