Birthday Coupon Code

The wonderful (but mostly silent) owner of Avane Shop, Jen is is turning 29 later this week, June 10th to be exact.:) In honor of this happy occasion we're giving away a few presents!

The next 10 orders get 29% off their total order at www.avaneshop.com Just use coupon Code: Birthday in the checkout screen. We have over a thousand items to browse through so there's bound to be something that strikes your fancy. Again this special gift is for the next 10 orders only so shop quickly or you'll miss out!

 

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Retro Review: Syberia PC

Syberia is 20 years old now but pretty much as soon as it was released it was considered an instead classic.


Introduction

American lawyer, Kate Walker goes to France to sign some paperwork giving a large client control of an old toy factory. When she arrives she discovers a town full of strange but beautifully intricate automatons and a half century old secret. Suddenly a one day trip to take care of a few formalities becomes a life changing adventure aboard a clockwork train  heading for the fabled island of Syberia.

Overview

Controls aren't bad, it's a point and click so there's not a whole lot of guessing or wondering how something is done. However Kate can be kind of sluggish sometimes, watching her take the stairs was particularly annoying for me but did make me nostalgic for those old PS1 adventures games that suffered the same issue. Additionally looking for the right sweet spot to make something work or pick up a necessary item got tiresome sometimes, but nothing any adventure game player shouldn't be very familiar with.

Graphically it's nice overall. The character designs are pretty consistent with the time period though their movements themselves are bit stiff. The environments are imaginative and beautifully rendered with gorgeous art-nouveau and steampunk styling throughout, even the menu is pretty. My small issue is while they're lovely, the environments are pretty flat there's usually not a lot of background activity happening and you usually only see everything from one angle.

Soundwise it's good, but not phenomenal. It's got full voice-overs which normally in a game of this type I could take or leave, but other than a few
botched accents the voice actors were very believable.The only issue there was that it was the voices were often delayed, making many conversations awkward sounding especially when one character broke into another's speech or was supposed to be startling.

The music, was well written and appropriate, but I had a problem with it's usage. Every single time you accomplished a task like turning something on or putting something together, you got a big swell of music. Which was ok the first time and maybe even the 10th time, but after that I was completely over it. It drowned out any background noise or conversation for those couple of minutes you were stuck listening to it. It at least had the decency change depending on your area, but it still got old quickly, which honestly is kind of a shame because the music was otherwise a high point.

Gameplay

As a point and click style adventure, your primary means of going through the game is talking to NPCs, finding important documents, finding random objects, using said random object with information obtained from NPCs and documents to complete a task and move on with your game. Simple classic stuff here, not too much different from the sort of things we were playing back in the eighties (King's Quest anyone?) it just looks nicer.

The exploration leaves a bit to be desired. The locations are lovely and pretty well realized, but as I noted above they're a bit flat. Most places you can only see from one angle and there isn't really a lot of room to wander around. You're always on a main path that will take you to a puzzle or objective, sightseeing off the beaten path isn't an option. Additionally, Kate often wouldn't speak to NPCs that weren't absolutely necessary, or examine and comment on her environment unless it was relevant to the story right then. This sort of thing is a huge pet peeve of mine in any adventure game, as I feel extraneous environmental details, while unimportant to storyline, add to the depth and overall feel of a game. I will say however, that in some ways this detraction is also a blessing in some ways. As I mentioned briefly above, Kate walks painfully slowly even when running. I often found myself dreading any backtracking I had to do, so having full run of the land might not be so great. On the other hand, I'm playing an adventure game because I want an adventure I can feel connected to and immersed in, not a carnival haunted house style experience on rails.

I can't discuss the puzzles in any detail without ruining things, but they're pretty easy for a veteran gamer, not so easy they insult your intelligence though. Even if you're not an experienced game adventurer, they're not so hard you find yourself wanting to send the programmers some less than complementary emails. Most solutions are either discussed somewhere or by someone or are pretty logical once you have all the required items. I only found a few places where I got stuck because the next course of action wasn't exactly logical or ever discussed, but not really anything out of the ordinary for this type of game.

The storyline is interesting and compelling, Kate spends most of the game trying to track down the mysterious heir, master automaton maker and mammoth obsessee, Hans Voralburg. Tracking Hans is no easy task as by all accounts no one has seen him for years, and some think him long dead. Her only clues are his now dead sister's notes and some of Hans' creations including a clockwork train, and Oscar the amazing automaton train conductor who's AI tends toward the neurotic with special attention paid to needless bureaucracy. The two of them encounter a large cast of colorful NPCs ranging from a hotel clerks and barge captains to a drunken astronaut and a world famous opera singer. Most of the NPC are pretty fleshed out as well with refreshingly non-archetypal personalities. Even the locations themselves have interesting and complex histories for Katie to learn about.

Kate Walker's own personality comes through surprisingly natural character development. You learn about Kate's life via a series of cell phone conversations with her mother, best friend, fiancee, and boss. A nice change from the normal "my name is ___ and here's my life story" randomly blurted out in a cutscene found in many lesser quality games. By the end of the game I found myself thinking of Kate not quite as friend, but still fondly and familiarly, like an old high school acquaintance I would like to catch up with over coffee.

They only issue with the storyline is the ending. Without ruining any details, it's abrupt, anti-climatic and clearly a lead-in to a sequel. Personally I can't stand it when game publishers (or movie makers, or novel writers) do that instead of giving you a real ending, there are ways of both giving your story and end that won't make your players feel like they wasted hours for nothing and still leave your options open for a sequel. I didn't necessarily feel like I wasted my time at the end of Syberia, but I did feel a bit cheated.

Conclusion

Syberia is a good game, it's got a nice classic feel and a unique, compelling storyline. Visually it's treat, every single object, environment and menu has been carefully and artfully designed and well rendered especially for the time period. The game isn't without it's flaws, as discussed above, but the positives outweigh them. So, if you've got a few hours to spare and are looking for a unique adventure Syberia won't disappoint.

~Stephanie

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Collection Oddities: Bootleg Sailor Moon Car Pencil Box

Our collection of weird Sailor Moon items isn't just limited to officially licensed crack, we have a wide variety of unofficial items as well. Now finding a crack bootleg item is like shooting fish in a barrel, but we try to get some of crackest of the crack items. That being said we present you with one of the worst offenders, A Car Shaped Pencil Box:

Who knew that Sailor Moon and Sailor Chibimoon rode around in such a flashy car? Though admittedly Usagi won't be driving it for much longer if she doesn't put more than one posing finger on the wheel. Stranger still who knew they hung out with other magical girls like Momoko from wedding peach? Though even though she looks like she's smiling in the back window, something much more sinister may be going on..

Instead of having a normal hood, this car is so fancy the whole top comes up for extra easy access, snazzy!

You've got to wonder how exactly they're getting around. I'm really not a car person, but I've seen a variety of engines none of which seem to resemble an unplayable race themed board game. On the plus side it seems like a pretty unique green environmentally friendly solution, a moon princess has to be socially conscious after all.

In all reality, this a tin pencil box with a hinged lid and single inner tray, it probably would hold your pencil, but wouldn't hold up to much wear and tear. We bought it online (for around $5 including shipping) but it almost certainly came out of some back alley Chinatown dollar store. However, in spite of it's many flaws and inaccuracies, this is a fun and unique piece for our collection and will serve us well holding wands, time keys and doll stands.

~Stephanie

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Legends of Murder 2: Grey Haven Download

Strangely enough one of the most visited post on our blog is for our review of Legends of Murder 2: Greyhaven which we found strange as it's relatively unknown game. Checking the analytics it seems most people are coming to it looking to download the game itself and though it's taken us a while we finally have it available for anyone to download. Click the image below to get it and all the games off that big blue disk collection:

 Due to a change in our hosting we're currently not able to offer this game directly, but  it is available from my abandonware We've downloaded a working copy from that site ourselves to check it out but we are not in any other way associated with that site.

 We've most recently run this game on windows Vista using DosBox, but have also run it on various older OS's including XP, Windows98 & Windows 95 in the past.


We hope that you'll thoroughly enjoy it, it's really a fabulous game.

~Jen & Stephanie


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Collection Update New Anime Cels

 It's been 6 months since our last cel gallery update, so we thought it was high time we shared our joy at acquiring new beauties with the world. We updated  19 new cels in our main gallery from several series. It's be a HUGE post if we reposted them all here, so here are just a few highlights. The biggest influx was new sailor moon cels, with 4 new pieces joining our collection. The highlight of that set is this gorgeous Tiger's Eye:

Tiger's eye urges you to look at his charming chapeau.

We had long admired this Tiger's eye in the original owner's gallery and immediately jumped at the chance to add him to our collection, but it almost didn't happen, read the story here. We added 3 other moon cels as well so check those and the rest of our moon cel collection out in our main gallery, Acetate Addiction.

Lots more after the jump:

Another section we added multiples to is CLAMP's X/1999 where we added 2 new lovlies. A lot of people don't like the film very much but most anime fans can't deny the the X movie cels are gorgeous.

Kanoe rarely looks so serene.

We'd Searched a long time for a great portrait shot of Kanoe with her head symbol fully visible. Luckily this one was updated during a dealer sale so we got this one at a significant discount too. ^_^ Visit her and our other new X cel (a Kamui) along with the rest of our  X cel collection. (please be aware that this gallery, though not the ones we linked directly, maybe NSFW as there is some character nudity.)

We also added a super cute my little pony commercial cels including this one from the Dream Castle Commercial:

Is there anything cuter than unicorns in love?

This is pretty much a perfect shot of the two unicorns and I LOVE unicorn cels! We also got a new shot of Peachy from a commercial as well , check out that and the rest of our MLP cels here


The last section that we added multiples to is our Random Video Game Cels section with 2 new cels from Pac-Man!:

Looks like there's been a power pellet pick up recently.

Inky, Blinky, Pinky Clyde & Sue. As far as we're concerned Clyde and Sue are the same ghost just with fluid gender identity, so it's interesting to see 5 ghost in this shot. Our other new Pac Man cel is great shot of Pacman himself making a hilarious face very similar to some you see in Pac-Man2.

Finally a one cel Glory, a beautiful shot of Mephisto from the Anime Classic Demon City Shinjuku:

"If you want my body, and you think I'm sexy c'mon sugar let me Knooow"

Mephisto may not sing Rod Stewart lyrics normally, but he is pretty much the perfect manifestation of Kawajiri's chracter designs and we mean that in the best possible way. It was added to our Miscellaneous section as we doubt we'll be adding more cels to this series but why not check out the whole section? It features cels from titles as diverse as Inuyasha and Perfect Blue with many more in between.

We hope you've enjoyed this little tour of our newest paint and plastic additions. Be sure to go to our main Gallery at Acetate Addiction  to see all our new additions and the rest of our collection.  And, while we didn't feature any of them here ,if you love cats be sure to check out our Millions of Cats cel gallery as we recently added some lovely kitties there as well.

~Stephanie

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The Sailor Moon Doll Spa

We get a lot of dolls, usually sailor moon, but occasionally others too, in the mail on a fairly regular basis. Often these dolls come to us in loved, over loved, ignored or even downright abused condition. We think that it's a shame to see those little lovelies in such a state so we treat almost every doll we receive (except the few that come to us mint) to Avane's Special doll spa.

First we disrobe them and let them soak in our solid marble pool filled with heated water drawn from Lake Superior and the finest cleansing bubbles with what the french call La shampooing des enfants. They clearly seem to enjoy being pampered:

Note the censor bars are for your protection and ours, excepting the two Setsunas and perhaps the unknown bandai blonde doll, these girls are all jailbait don't want any unpleasant accusations after all.

After a couple of hours leisurely soaking in the bubbles, we drain the pool and treat the dolls to an intensive total immersion full body steam soak, twice. This insures all dirt and debris and left over bubbles are rinsed away.

After that each doll has their faces and bodies carefully exfoliated before having their hair carefully combed and styled by one of our highly trained doll hair specialists. Great care is taken to keep hair as original and undamaged as possible, so sometimes this process can take an hour or more for just one doll. No pictures due to fear of trade secrets getting out (or because usually it's hard to take a shot of yourself combing doll hair)  During this time the previously removed clothing is soaked and then gently hand washed with Woolite in our exclusive marble wash basin (which looks strikingly similar to the main spa pool for some reason):

After each doll  and her corresponding clothing have had time to dry, the dolls are redressed, re-accessorized and re-primped for their debut to the world. As evidenced by this lovely Japanese Sailor Pluto Doll, who's now a lovely member of our collection.

I hope you've enjoyed your vicarious trip to the doll spa.

~Stephanie


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New Sailor Moon Italian Trading Figures Review

We don't normally do reviews for things that aren't completely oddball, but we've seen precious little about these new Italian toys on English sites other than a smattering of pictures. So we thought we'd show off this collection cute little figures.

First up the box:

It came slightly less cute looking, but we set up as a display box, just how it would look if we were lucky enough to live near a store that sold them. The box comes with 24 blind figures sealed in individual bags so everyone you get is a surprise. each bag contains a figure, a puzzle card and a sheet showing the full line of figures.

The puzzle cards aren't really cards as such, they're printed on glossy card stock but they're about half the width of a normal trading card and have wavy edges. each card correspond to the figure they're packed with and one side has information about the character along with a small picture (all the info is in Italian so we have no idea what they say). The Back side of the card has part of a larger image on it and when you assemble them all correctly they look like this:

It's not the most exciting Sailor Moon image I've ever seen, but it's cute.

The figures themselves are like Japanese Gashapons. Most come in separate parts and require assembly. There are 12 figures in all (13 if you count luna and artemis as separate though they come together). Here they are in no particular order see them all after the jump:

Retro Review: Winter Games NES edition

I mostly finished this review way back at the beginning of January, but life is didn't allow my to finish tweaking it then. Here in Minnesota it's still winter and will be until around June, but in other place spring is approaching so I thought I'd better finish this up while it was still relevant.


Introduction

This was the follow-up to the successful Summer Games and in spite of Epyx not getting IOC liscensing, it couldn't reasonably be considered anything but an Olympic game. I absolutely love Olympic themed video games. For more evidence of this strange compulsion check out my review of Lillehammer 94 game on the Genesis. In any case, given my weird need to play Olympic games it's no surprise that winter games is in my collection and that I feel compelled to share it with others. It's worth noting that this game was released on several platforms each varying slightly in content and presentation. I choose to focus on the NES version because it's the one I think most people, myself included are the most familiar with.

Overview

Controls vary from game to game,  most of them are fairly easy and responsive. And then there's figure skating. If you don't have a booklet handy, there is no figure skating (much to my infinite dismay in my younger days). Luckily while playing this time around I found this handy guide to the controls and strategies. Incidentally knowing the controls helps very little in that case, but I'll get more into that later.

Graphically it's crap. Animation is choppy, sprites are undetailed and backgrounds are a mess. It looks 100 times better on the C64. A PC to NES port losing some graphic luster was pretty common, but in this case it doesn't make sense the C64 version isn't anything special in the graphics department and it's nothing the NES shouldn't have been able to handle. Very disappointing overall.

Musically there's very little going on, the only event that really has music while you're doing it is figure skating and while the 8-bit rendition of the dance of the sugarplum fairy isn't really that bad, it gets very, very grating very quickly. There's the music after you've completed speed skating and done the aerials but unless you really want to hear it you're not likely to sit on the results screen and wait for it to play so it's not very memorable. The best music is probably the snippets of each counties' national anthem and the fact that you're forced to listened to whichever one you've chosen before stating an individual event kind of takes away from any minute amount of enjoyment they could have given you. The other sounds are pretty appropriate there just aren't very many of them.

Gameplay

Once you've navigated past the title screen and the emotionally gripping opening ceremony you're brought to your main options screen. Here you can choose to participate in all events in order, Participate in one event at a time, practice the events, see the records or watch the delightful opening ceremony again. Participating in all the events or just one of the events doesn't really matter as in both cases you'll set a record if you don't fail completely. There's not a medal award ceremony or a closing ceremony, or even a congratulations for competing in them all at once. Though there is the distinct advantage of only having to listen to your chosen country's anthem snippet once instead of each time you select an event. Practice gives you the advantage of not having to bother with country selection at all, but you won't set any records and who doesn't want all their friends to know that they got perfect 10's in hot dog aerials (until the game is turned off or reset). In any case regardless of how you choose to compete in them, there are 4 events.

First Up Hot Dog Aerials:

Before we get into playing this event, we must first question the name, yes there was a type of freestyle skiing referred to as "Hot Dog" But the term had mostly died out by the end of the 70's so why they'd choose to use it in a game made in 1986 is anyone's guess. For me personally it brings to mind a guy in a hot dog suit doing ski tricks, which would be cool, but that's not what you get at all.

This event is probably one of the most playable of the ones included in this port. You have three attempts to  launch your skier off a hill do some fancy tricks and land on your skis instead of your face. You can do back flips, front flips, and splits. The right combination will get you a perfect 10 and a digital roar from the crowd as well as the world record. Though to be fair the world record can be gained by doing dismally as well so long as no one played before you after the game has been turned on.

Next up Speed Skating:

Every game with mini games always has a button masher and that's speed skating in this collection. Once the "buzzer" goes of you mash the d pad back and forth like mad to get a good start and then ease up a bit to pick up the rhythm and if you're better than the AI you win.

 Once you get the hang of it you're all but guaranteed to win. This game is pretty much only fun if you've got a friend to play with, even then it's of limited entertainment value. However there is some needlessly epic music that plays when the game concludes whether you're the winner or loser, which provides a modicum of entertainment.




Then Figure Skating:

Figure skating is just awful, not even good enough for me to bother coming up with some sort of silly analogy. It's just your good old fashioned terrible implementation,  pure and simple. Controls are needlessly complex and require very precise timing. You'd think finding out the controls and what exactly that timing is would fix the problem. Unfortunately it doesn't, the controls aren't responsive enough for the timing required. If that's not bad enough there's an element of "artistry" involved meaning you can't do the same trick twice (even if you fail the first attempt) and need to string together a variety of trick types to get a decent score. In all fairness you can teach yourself to play this game if you're really committed to doing so and even get a decent score or two, but really it's not worth the time and frustration involved.

And finally a big finish with Bobsled:

In spite of being my "big finish" and being a cool sport in general, the bobsled event is really boring.  First problem is that for some unfathomable reason they developers choose to make the event itself take place in the upper right hand corner of the screen, while the map which is static save for your blinking position marker dominates the screen. Second the gameplay itself just isn't fun. You steer occasionally and you don't have to be particularly precise, steering away from the turns or into the turns nets about the same results. Which isn't of course to say that the event is easy, you flip over more often than you successfully get down the hill.

Conclusion

Even my weird love for Olympic games can't make this game legitimately enjoyable. The best events are playable, maybe and the worst are a waste of perfectly good cartridge space. As whole it's not good enough to be good, it's not even good enough to be mediocre,  nor is it bad enough to be notably bad. They only way I can see this being legitimately enjoyable is if you're playing with friends while drunk, and given I haven't tested that theory personally, it may prove just as disappointing.

~Stephanie

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Sailor Moon Oddities: GermanTattoo Armband

Normally this would be a collection oddities post but we don't own this, nor do we plan to. However, we still thought it had to be shared. So here we have an official Sailor Moon Tattoo Armband:

 Isn't that a nice trip back to the mid-nineties "Tattoo" jewelery craze. Back then, there were Tattoo chokers, bracelets, armbands and anklets in every drug store,  accessory boutique and vending machine as far as the eye could see. Each made of the same cheap breaks-within-days stretchy plastic in a loopy weave made in a sweatshop somewhere to allow the rest of us a few fleeting moments of fashion bliss. It was a magical time. This particular specimen would have been among the creme de la creme of plastic tattoo jewelry with it's fancy bead embellishments.Though, in spite of it's awe inspiring beauty, it does have a small flaw, it has absolutely NOTHING to do with Sailor Moon.

  Now here in North America when we wanted market some stupid crap that had nothing to do with Sailor Moon to the fans we slapped a logo, some crappy semi-related art or at the very least some crescent moons on the item itself. Not Germany though, why would they cheapen such a fantastic timeless piece of jewelry by forcing it to be even loosely moon themed?  I imagine the conversation went something like this only in German:

German Marketer 1: Surely marketer 2 you realize that the tattoo jewelry craze completely missed Juban?
German Marketer 2: That hardly matters, have you seen the other items that have been manufactured for this series worldwide?
German Marketer 1: Well, that's an excellent point, but perhaps we should at least put a logo or some crescent moons on it So people know it's loosely affiliated with the Sailor Moon Series?
German Marketer 2: *Scoffs* It's thinking like that that keeps you a  Junior Marketer, while I'm a Senior Marketer. Clearly there isn't room for a logo and everyone knows crescent moons are tacky. We want to make plastic jewelry the young women of Germany can appreciate for a lifetime. Clearly such a feat can only be achieved using a beaded flower pattern.
German Marketer 1: Then why are we even bothering to put it in sailor moon packaging instead selling it as just an armband? 
German Marketer 2:  Naturally so we can charge more for it.  

Sure I completely made that up, but clearly given the evidence, something similar had to have taken place.  It's the only explanation that makes sense.

Meanwhile, if you want this stunning piece for your own collection, it's currently available on  German Ebay Here. I'm pretty sure that seller ships worldwide so for only 1 euro + shipping, you can purchase this fabulous Sailor Moon item and be mid-nintes fabulous no matter where in the world you are. For once I think we'll pass.

~Stephanie



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Christmas Shipping Dates

So it's 4:30 Monday morning and I'm furiously packing in the hopes of getting all of this weekends order sent out today to make sure everyone gets everything before Christmas. In light of this I thought it high time we addressed this years shipping Cut-off dates. We normally specify a a 5 business day handling time on orders but on orders made until December 21st we're specifying a 1-2 day time.

Below are the dates you'll have to place your order on and the service you'll have to use to ensure delivery before Christmas.

USA Domestic Mail:

Parcel Post: December 14th
First Class: December 19th
Priority: December 20th
Express: December 21st

Please note that many of our books are flat rate shipping for media mail which will not arrive in time for Christmas, if you're interested in ordering a book for a Christmas gift, please contact us about your shipping options prior to order, we'll be happy to send using another option.

International Mail (Excluding Centeral & South America and Africa):

Express Mail: December 15th

Express mail is the only service available that will arrive before Christmas for anyone outside the US.

So there's another week left for those of you in the US and another few days for international buyers. We currently have 615 items in stock, there's sure to be something for the geeky collector on your gift list!