PC Games from Japan on Steam

Welcome 2026!

Its you! Here you are... again! But why? Do you just like reading embarrassing things that much? Really now! Surely you've got someplace better to be. Or you must really like watching me make a fool of myself! Well, nevermind now. Whatever the reason, you actually wanted to stop in and visit, so I can't possibly say no. Plus its been awhile, hasn't it? So come on in and sit with daicon for a smidge. This clunkers still got a nice cabin heater, and it'll keep us warm for awhile as we catch up.

Look. As we speak, the year is rapidly nearing its end. The futures already come to most of the world now, but we're sitting on the very last vestiges of 2025. It's not that I'm hesitating to make the jump... it's just I want to take every last second to think what did it all mean before the future swallows us up again. What is there to say...

Well I wouldn't call it a pleasant year, by my metrics. Would you? How can we start to put it into words? You could say, it did have its moments...

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As always, starting with games, and we had a little miracle, didn't we? At the end of July, the Stop Killing Games campaign ended with 1.4 million signatures, far exceeding my expectations. For a campaign with no funding, that's quite a feat. Things are starting to get interesting, and what follows next year may change what game ownership means at some point. Hopefully this bears fruit in 2026, or atleast '27. I'll be there for it, and I think I'll see you there too.

This year we experienced wholesale institutional payment censorship on Steam, an issue thats long been foreshadowed in Japan. Its an exacerbation, as the platform rules for Steam have already been murky for Japanese games, and now those issues climb to an even higher tier of authority. Can Steam really ever become a place with clear standards where doujin games can express themselves reasonably? I'd say the chances of that have just dropped dramatically, but its not set in stone. (And Rance is supposedly coming to Steam?) This is still an ongoing discussion.

What about the games themselves? I don't know about you, but even after the Game Awards, there's still just two games I'm really excited for in the future. Samurai Pizza Cats: Blast from the Past and most of all Black Finger JET the game from the actual former Metal Slug creators coming back together again! You can find the old Metal Slug artist Akio now active on twitter[x.com], sharing amazing stories about development and interacting with questions. The previews of the new sprites are incredible. He hasn't dulled one bit with age. Oh, and I do like this "Stupid Never Dies" game though. That's my pick from TGA.

The new Steam hardware looks cool, and I'm eagerly poised to jump on a Frame... price pending. And in some relation to that, the end of this year has been filled with debate on what AI is going to mean for games (and everyting) going forward. Its been like a chilling wind thats washed over some and left them questioning the meaning of their craft. But hey, that's what being an artist is. The world is always going to be telling you to give up. That's a given. Whether its age, you see someone better, or even if it feels like the entire world has revolutionized itself just to say that your pursuit has no meaning... Your pursuit is the face of that is the meaning that all other things shrink away from, and we all innately know thats true. I don't hate AI, but I just know that its not something synthetic, no matter how marvelous, that keeps me turning a page. I'm not alone in that. So if you need to hear it from someone: Don't fret.

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All this evening, I've been pondering other things though. Something that might make for a fun topic. I've been thinking a lot about why I became so, frankly, obsessed with Japanese games in my early youth. If you're here, you have a similar story for sure. So what connections or quirks of fate led us to be here instead of somewhere else? Atleast, how did I end up as this graceless oldtaku, as they say?

The thing is, I've kinda been a weeb from the start. Like seriously. Yeah I know its nonsense, but these things weebs love have been entangled with my earliest remaining memories. Just how it is. Part of that is just dumb luck, you could say. One of the first cartoons I was given to watch was Leiji Matsumoto's "Arcadia of my Youth", though it was edited and called "Vengeance of the Space Pirate" then. Somewhere after that I got to see the terrible Weinstein edit of Nausicaa, then called "Warriors of the Wind".

These were among big moments for me. I didn't know the word "anime". I could hardly not mix up Japan from China, but I just knew that cartoons from "there" were so much better. At that point, whenever you saw that look, it was like all neurons in my little brain were activated and time stood still.

But more than that, I'd say it goes back to the very first friends I ever had.

My earliest memories typically go back not much further than being a child in Atlanta. It was just me, my brother, and mom. I was a scared kid. My brother was the brave one. We didn't have friends, and the other kids in this complex outright rejected us. Quite viciously, tbh. But we weren't the only one. A Japanese family lived in a nearby unit, and we got to meet them and their kids.

Their parents were thrilled to have us be friends to their family, with this natural hospitality that was foreign to us. I can understand why. They wanted their sons to have friends, to communicate, and have a normal childhood while in America. We became their friends, and we played all the time, as best as we knew how, coming from a rather unsocialized background. There were two of them and two of us, and together we made four.

We didn't play like normal, atleast as I remember. In my memories, we were always searching for something. Like dragons, monsters, or something else. Whatever was in our imagination Around the other apartments, under bridges, in grassy areas, we wandered around together. That's what I remember. Thinking back, it was kind of like an RPG party.

They let us in their home too. They must have had tapes sent back from Japan, because I would get to see snippets of Japanese television on them, and of course Japanese cartoons were mesmerizing when they would appear. Then, of course, there were the games. We would play together and they would generously let us play their games. More than that, they would eagerly lend us NES games to play.

Now, I don't know about you but back then, as is often still the case, you don't loan your game carts. Ever. Double so if you're a kid in Atlanta. But they would do it with complete trust in us. I remember Castelian, a rather slow and hard platformer, and Shadowgate, who's game over screen would scare the hell out of me. It was a kind of kindness unknown to me then. We played many games, mostly NES, and on Christmas their daughter, whom we hardly got to know, played violin for us.

I don't remember what their faces, sadly. I can try to concentrate and pull something out from my memories, but I'm just conjuring something else at that point. However, I remember one short moment quite vividly for some reason. I'd gotten an annoying splinter in my fingertip while playing, and I couldn't get it out. They took me in their home into a back room where their grandmother always was. It was all dark but a dim warm hued light next to her in the room. She looked at me with no sort of expression, got out a small pretty sewing kit, and pulled out a needle. I didn't understand and started to struggle but she held my hand firm, and effortlessly plucked the splinter out, looked me in the eyes and then smiled. That smile really burned itself into my memories.

We left suddenly one day, and never got to say goodbye or anything like that. Whatever happened was beyond my understanding as a kid. My only memory is of standing on the side of the road with our stuff, and we soon ended up somewhere else. (And that's a whole other story.)

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Now hey, it'd be really unfair if I didn't talk about another important friend when it comes to how I got to be such a weeb. Jumping ahead, I was still a quiet kid, but my memory is more clear here, and first of all, there's Dragon Ball...

Before Toonami existed, Dragon Ball was on TV actually, but it was really just reruns of the same 13 episodes every Sunday. In my neighborhood, its through this show me and another kid became friends. Even with just 13 eps, we were obsessed. Of course we blasted each other with Kamehamehas (mixed in with some Mortal Kombat moves). We drew a lot as well. Sailor Moon was on TV too! But boys had to watch that in secret, dontchaknow~.

One day, while watching together, something was different. With no warning, it wasn't a rerun anymore: Goku was an adult, and there were all these new characters we didn't recognize. We were dead silent taking it all in, and when the episode ended and the show proudly proclaimed itself "Z", I remember our reaction. We looked at each other and just started screaming and jumping up and down wildly. For like a minute straight, we were bouncing off the walls. Goku was an adult now! And he looked so damn cool too. I still remember this moment so well.

During a particularly cold winter, the power went out for 2 weeks during a snow storm. He came over with his gameboy and we played it under a candlelight. He had a TMNT game, and Samurai Shodown for it (iirc). However, his power wasn't out, it took me years to reflect back on it and realize he wasn't there because he was bored, he was there because we were. AA batteries were expensive too, and he came over just so we had something to play for a bit. Thinking back, it was always like that. Whenever he rented a game, or got one, he would bring it over to play. We tried to do the same. We rented every Megaman game as they came out, and then we watched the terrible cartoon on TV. He gave me my first dirty magazine. I remember trying to give him a game one day and he refused it. He didn't want to take advantage of me.

We moved away, but years later I was riding my bike around on halloween when I saw him again, in a completely different town. He was laughing hysterically when he realized it was me. He saw me at a distance because my hair was still unusually long for a guy (I didn't get my first haircut until I was 23 btw) I was caught off-guard and alittle embarrassed, but happy to see him. He had a pal with him and wanted to know where I lived so we rode there, but upon arriving my mom took me inside and told me to get rid of them. She told me to tell them I had a sick grandmother sleeping inside (an utter lie). I mean, I'll say what it was. They was black, and though she recognized him, his friend she didn't trust, and it was late. I went and did as told, so he never got to come inside, see my new games, etc. We said we'd meet again. However, I never saw him again after that.

It still stings abit. Its kind of one of those cases where familial loyalty deprives you of something important, but its really all on me. There was a lesson there atleast. When something feels wrong, you ought to listen. Sometimes there's another path.

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Getting restless..? I see I see. Well then, how about this...

You're been wondering how I got the "daicon" moniker, right? Yes yes, I know rumor say its to do with part of me having a certain... resemblance to a daikon, in some ways, but its actually a bit more complicated. The truth is, it all ties back when I was 13 years old, at my first anime convention! (wait, am I showing my age?)

Conventions sometimes have a "day 0" for their opening ceremony and the like, often the Thursday before. I was at Animazement in Raleigh with my brother and my dear late friend. At the opening ceremony they played... you guessed it... the Daicon IV animation short. I was stunned ("Animazed", if you will). I didn't know who Gainax was, or the lore behind it, and I think it might have been something of a tradition at other cons to show it as well. I just remember trying to take it all in, like this would be the only time I would ever get the chance to see it. It gave me this feeling like just about anything could happen at this con.

I got to meet Rachel Lillis that night (EN voice of Misty, Jesse and others), whom I was already excited to meet. The three of us talked to her and she performed her voices to our amusement. On the last day of the con, I bought a pokemon mouse pad in the dealer room and brought it to her to sign. (Its worth noting that asking guests to sign stuff outside of allowed areas wasn't allowed iirc.) Surprisingly, she remembered my name from the first day and wrote a kind message on it. For a long time I had a desire to take a picture of it and thank her for the memory, but Lillis sadly passed away in 2024.

Before, my handle online was something like ken_ohki, after the Tenchi Muyo TV anime character. I had a sizable fangroup on "Yahoo Clubs". Later, inspired by the character Otacon from Metal Gear Solid, I started using this screen name, and have for atleast 2 decades now. Back then, it was an easy name to register. Now, it gets snapped up pretty much instantly!

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My life is full of memories of people I never got to fully thank before they disappeared from it. If there was one feeling that really defined my existence, or that I was put here to feel, its possible that might be it. To describe it, its like my body is filled with these unspoken words of thanks to those who were such characters in my life, and also the many silent wishes that we cross paths again.

There are so many stories like this I could say. SO many faces I remember. I'll just say maybe you should hold the friends you've got close, obviously. Sometimes that involves setting aside differences. Sometimes that involves accepting those embarrassing moments you want to bury or run away from. In time, all those things become petty compared to an old bond.

I've got friends I haven't talked to in years that I still think about often and are important figures inside me. Do you feel that too? Like there any old friends you never got to say goodbye to? Names you haven't uttered in a long time? If you feel compelled, share them why dontcha? Lets let the old memories come out to play tonight. I don't want to leave them behind, I'd much rather carry them along into the future. The past doesn't weigh me down anymore, instead its what helps keep my limbs moving.

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You're still with me? Its safe to say this post has well dipped into "diary" territory, hasn't it? Honestly I didn't think I'd even get to say anything today. Personal responsibilities have mounted at an alarming rate. Family health issues have made me inherit a whole other life of tasks. In addition, few days ago my server started experiencing cascading drive failures. Not a good start to the year! But I'm glad I did write something. Its helped me calm down as I wait for new parts (and whisper a prayer) to hopefully avoid catastrophic data loss! Another dark spectre looming above, it can line up with the rest...

But its not all bad. I have you here for company, and you must really enjoy these awkward moments, huh? I'm writing much of this on my phone from in bed, staying under the covers for warmth. That's probably why things have gotten so sentimental so quickly. Those are the kinds of thoughts that often come to you when you're lying in bed, after all. I only hope I don't come across as self-indulging or narcissistic. If I do, well, maybe it's so.

Sometimes I think of Tycho from Penny Arcade. Someone with an enviable vocabulary who would write these prolonged posts about a topic to accompany the comics. I used to laugh at how ridiculously indulgent they were, but here I find myself doing the exact same thing, just not half as clever.

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SO! Here's to you, friend, and to the ones who aren't with us anymore. Yours and mine. While we talked, 2025 has finally caved in under us, and we've fallen into the New Year and there's no going back!

I got to share a bit of my story, and its felt nice. Maybe next time, you'll talk about some who've left their mark on you. I know you got a story too, and I'd like to hear it sometime. The comment section doesn't leave ya much room though... Or atleast let me know what you'll be playing this year!

I've got my resolution, and hopefully we'll be hearing from each other a lot more this year. In the meantime, lets get out and wander around alittle. We can't make new stories if we stay in here! Its cold but.. we'll be fine!

Happy New Year, pal.