Steve Jobs the Action Figure

China is such a wacky, law-circumventing place. Companies there will literally make and sell anything, copyrights be damned. Recently, a company known as Inicons has publicized and started selling a Steve Jobs action figure for $99.99. The figurine looks amazingly life-like, almost to a creepy degree. Jobs is wearing his trademark black sweater, blue jeans, and tennis shoes; the only thing not included are mini-Apple products for him to present to your other action figures. According to Inicons, removing the mini-Apple products from the packaging keeps the figure in legal territory and allows the product to be sold. However, Apple disagrees stating that Job's family owns all rights to his likeness and it cannot be used without their permission.
Personally, I find the figure to be a neat tribute. I love Apple products and think of Steve Jobs as one of the greatest computer innovators and visionaries in American history. I do respect that his family may not want some unauthorized company in China profiteering off of Job's death, and believe they have every right to seek legal action, but my inner fanboy does want one, because Inicons did a great job on the likeness. At first glance I thought it was a new Hot Toys collectible. Supposedly production has been stopped for the time being due to the legal actions of Apple. If you want one, and missed the pre-order window, try eBay.

Don't stare back, you will feel really uncomfortable!

DS Games You Should Buy Before Its Too Late

The Nintendo DS has a grim outlook in the US. Very few games are set to be released for the old portable aside from some shovelware or licensed crap, and the 3DS is stealing most of the spotlight from the once beloved handheld. I still enjoy my DS, and hope a few more last minute gems find their way to US before the system dies completely, but I am not holding my breath. At least Europe is getting Solatorobo, a fine looking action J-RPG about dog people. If you like to own every game for a chosen system or simply collect rare stuff, here are my suggestions for games to buy before they go to triple digit prices on eBay in the near future...

Monster Tale 
From the makers of Henry Hatsworth comes Monster Tale. This game is an adorable 2-D hodgepodge of classics like Mega Man, Pokemon, and Metroid. You control a little girl and her monster as they attempt to find their way back home from a planet ruled by evil children. As with most last gen games, Monster Tale just came out and it is already getting a little hard to find at retail stores. The game is fun and worth the $30 price tag on Amazon. Grab this one before it is too late (cough...remember Shantae...cough)

Dragon Quest V 
Unlike Dragon Quest IV, this sequel was printed in very low numbers. It is already hard to find, and most people online are asking around $60 for a used copy. Why is this Dragon Quest so special? It is considered by most Japanese fans to be the pinnacle of the series. It follows the entire lifetime of a hero from his birth to when he has his own children and they start on a quest of their own. The game is very cool, and comes highly recommended...just don't pay too much for a copy. I recently got a brand new Dragon Quest V for $30 at K Mart.

Sailor Moon La Luna Splende
My friend actually pointed this one out to me. It is a 2-D action game starring the Sailor Scouts that came out last month. Now for the strange part...it only released in Italy. From my understanding the rest of Europe has too much red tape about licensing issues to work around, so only Italy is getting this game as for now. Anime is very popular in Italy, so it makes sense, but for American fans, all I can say is good luck getting a copy for a cheap price. Sailor Moon La Luna Splende is already going for over double it's retail price on eBay in the US. This rarity will surely be worth plenty of cash to collectors in a few years as game releases don't get much more obscure than Italian only. 

Other Games to Watch for:

• Tetris DS
• Hotel Dusk (European Release)
• Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland (European Release)
• Game and Watch Collections (Club Nintendo only)
• Electroplankton 

The Quest to Collect the Mega Man Series

Recently I have found that obtaining an entire lineage of Mega Man titles seems more and more entertaining to me. It started with me picking up Mega Man 2 at thrift store. Then I found a mint copy of Mega Man X (my personal favorite) at another thrift store. Now I own digital copies of Mega Man 9 on XBLA and Mega Man 3 on Virtual Console.

I now own the following:

Mega Man 2 for NES
Mega Man 3 for Virtual Console
Mega Man 8 for PSX
Mega Man 9 for XBLA
Mega Man X for SNES
Mega Man the Power Fighters 1 & 2 in my CPS2 arcade cabinet

I could buy the collection games easily online, but that just seems boring and the emulation is off in some places from what I hear anyway. One of the most cool things I have ordered online recently is a box of Mega Man candy from Japan. It is called Rockmanju which is a bad pun based on Rockman and manju (Rockman being the Japanese name for Mega Man and Ju the Japanese character for ten.) Manju is a traditional cookie like treat, but I don't plan of eating it.

The box contains the Japanese style Mega Man 10 box art. It is the only place you will find it as everywhere insist on using intentionally bad Western art to parody bad box art from the NES era. The box looks like a famicom box from back in the day which makes it all the more awesome to have in my collection. Inside the box are little cookies with 8-bit Mega Man sprites on them. Overall, Capcom went out of their way to make a great item for fans.

Another edition has the original Japanese Rock Man art.

I plan on hitting the thrift store later today. Hopefully I can find some more Mega Man games hidden away.