Bringing my Arcadia magazines in out of the rain...

If you have been visiting this blog for a while you might remember that I made myself ill while working on the Street Fighter 6 deep dive. I had a whole new perspective on my life, and my health while I was recovering. I thought about my family, my friends, and the loves in my life. Should anything happen to me I wanted to share online as much, if not all the gaming items I had collected through the years. To do that I needed to bring in my collection out of the garage, and into the apartment. In late summer/ early fall of 2023 I brought over my game books, comics, manga, and magazines. The majority were from Japan. It gave me a tremendous peace of mind, but was incomplete. I would have to return to the garage to do more digging.

Granted, I used to have a much larger collection. Decades ago there was a flood in my mom’s garage, where I lost the majority of my US gaming magazines, comics, and monster truck magazines. It broke my heart throwing away decades worth of memories that were ruined, and dissolving. About 15 years after I lost them I started rebuilding my monster truck magazines, and in the early 2020’s had them mostly restored, plus other gems that I never owned. By a fluke most of my Japanese issues were spared during the floods, and multiple moves. I set them aside, and kept them in storage, and our garage for years, and years. With the freak storms in Southern California started picking up in 2023-2024 I didn’t trust that they were going to be safe much longer. To keep them out of the elements I cleared out room in my hallway, and hallway closet. This month I brought over another big chunk of my collection, specifically my issues of Arcadia magazine.

In case you didn’t know there were some fantastic magazines coming out of Japan. The most popular from the ’80s to today was Famitsu, but as far as arcade gaming went there was nothing better than Gamest. I had a bunch of those issues from the early ‘90s through their last issue in 1999. I had brought them into the apartment last fall. When Gamest magazine closed down a number of their writers, and editors launched a new magazine called Arcadia. I started collecting those issues shortly after 2000, and even had a subscription from the middle of the decade, all the way until their last issue at the end of 2012. Of all the magazines I owned it was the longest consecutive streak still in my possession. I loved all the Japanese mags in my collection because they were a repository of an entire era.

In addition to previews, and reviews these magazines were also places where the developers shared concept art, and official character art. In many instances these games would never get an official strategy guide, or art book. So these were the only places where fans could see the work of some brilliant creators. It was a privilege to be able to refer back to them, and study the work that went into the creation of some little-known arcade games, as well as the most popular titles.

The magazines also would publish episodes of a manga based on a popular games, like the Street Fighter series. They would have recurring columns from pro gamers like Daigo Imahura, and interviews with SFIV, and SFV producer Yoshinori Ono. As if that wasn’t a great insight to the gaming community the magazines would sometimes throw in a poster, or even a paper craft model.

Those weren’t the only cool things that they included. In several issues there were music CDs, DVD previews of games, and even entire fighting game tournaments included in plastic sleeves. Japan hosted the Arcadia cup, which was sort of like their EVO tournament. Many of the best players of today cut their teeth in those contests.

The thing that I especially loved in the pages of Gamest, and Arcadia were the collectables from popular games. There were officially licensed soft goods, hats, shirts, jackets, etc. of various franchises. There were also toys, and statues that you could only order from their pages. If you were a serious gamer in Japan then chances were you had ordered some exclusives from those magazines.

If there was a game merchandise item you wished was produced what would it be? A cosplay piece? A weapon recreation? A tee shirt, or toy? I wish some of the skateboard decks from Sega’s Top Skater had been produced. I actually own a plastic deck from the actual arcade cabinet. But I mean I’d like one of the skateboards from the in game characters. How cool would a pair of the jet-powered inline skates from Jet Set Radio look hanging on your wall? I’d like to hear about which collectable you wish was made it in the comments section. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!