The Allegory of Whatever

IRO-IRO
[How to Play Import Games] [Japanese Kana Charts] [Merchandise] [Persona 2 Tsumi: Errors of their Youth CD] [Doujinshi] [Manga] [Recommended Mythology Books]

How to Play Import Games

The script for Tsumi isn't really a substitute for playing the game. You're really missing out if you decide that this script is enough to start ficcing with, or something like that. (Don't laugh, people really do that with scripts and plot tapes!) There are three steps to playing Tsumi (or any import game) that you can follow in any particular order:

1. Get the game - it cost me about $40 including shipping from Himeya Shop. I've tried to order games from JPAmazon, but they don't ship games to overseas addresses.

2. Get a Playstation - You already have a playstation, you say? Well, it can't play an import game without one of two things: An external "plug" mod or an internal "chip" mod. Remember Gamesharks? The same thing, more or less. Now, the type of Playstation you have determines whether you'll use an plug mod or a chip mod.

OLDER PLAYSTATIONS:

NEWER PLAYSTATIONS (post-1998 or so):

Which should you do? Well, you probably have a newer playstation, I'm guessing. So you'd need an internal mod. However, those have to be soldered to the motherboard, and either you can do it yourself (and possibly ruin your PSX and endanger your chances of having children), or pay someone else to do it, and have to pay shipping charges, installation charges, blah blah blah. Because all that sounds like a giant pain to me, I personally went with an old playstation with an external plug mod.

If you don't have an old playstation, you can troll EBay for cheap used playstations. You need the 7501 series of Playstation - that's the one one with both the serial and parallel I/O ports - to plug in an external gameshark. If you're not sure what you have, and you bought the playstation in the past three years or so, it's probably the wrong type. (I got my first one in late 1997, and bought a cheap replacement one off EBay.)

3. Get a Mod - If you're getting a chip mod, I can't help you much since I haven't done it myself. Do a Google search and ask friends. But if you're buying an external mod, what you want is something like this. Brand names vary...GameXChange, Goldfinger, and so on, and I would seriously recommend shopping around. I got mine for $15, so don't let anyone rip you off to the tune of $35.

When you get your mod, it'll come with a small spring. Don't lose that (unless you want to have fun disassembling pens in search of another spring the right size). Stick the plug mod in the parallel I/O port in the back (geez, I think I have these names right...I'm obviously not one of those people who could take apart their playstation competently). Then open up your playstation lid, as if you were going to put in a game. Under the lid, to the right and at the very back, you'll see a little cone that comes down off the lid of the PSX. If you partially close the lid, you'll see that the cone goes down into a little round spring-mounted platform. That is essentially how the PSX tells if the lid is open or closed; if the cone is pressing down on the platform, the door is closed. Well, we have to fool the PSX into thinking that the door is closed all the time. So take that little spring, put the cone into one end of it, and put the other onto the little platform. The tensile force of the spring will depress the platform, and the PSX will be fooled into thinking its lid is closed all the time.

To play Tsumi, put a legitimate US game in the PSX, keep the lid open, and turn the PSX on. The game will start spinning, and you'll get some kind of menu on the TV screen. When the US game stops spinning completely, take it out and replace it with Tsumi. Use your controller to click "start game" or whatever on the TV screen's menu, and you're good to go. Keep the PSX lid open until you're sure Tsumi is booting correctly, and then carefully and slowly shut it. You'll have to do this boot procedure each time you play.

If this is starting to sound expensive...well, playing Japanese games is not for the poor or unemployed. ^_~ But if you have at least $60 to spare, you can set yourself up from scratch and be able to play all the weird foreign video games you like! :D

JAPANESE KANA CHARTS

You can not play Tsumi without being able to read hiragana and katakana. It also helps if you know a few basic kanji - water, wind, fire, earth, and so on - but you can squeak by with kana alone.

Katakana Chart
Hiragana Chart

If you're ever really stuck on something, or have a question you think we could answer, hop on over to the Forums at the Oracle of Maiya.

MERCHANDISING, THE HOPE OF THE FUTURE!

There's a lot of Tsumi swag out there. I'm only going to highlight the best stuff.

[ DOUJINSHI]

KANEKO KAZUMA ARTBOOKS
Kaneko Kazuma is the guy who does those wonderfully stylized character designs, not the guy who does the in-game art. But his artbooks are GREAT.

He has three big artbooks out (there's one more, but it's pretty hard to find) - collectively, I think they're known as the "Pandaemonium" (Place of Many Demons). The first two - the Red and the Black book - have demon designs from all the games he's worked on in the Megaten series, with english names, katakana spelling, and a short (Japanese) mythological explanation of the demon. The third artbook, the Purple Book, is all character designs. I love these artbooks. I picked up mine in Japan, but you can get all three of these from Amazon Japan. Sorry, I don't know if any English stores sell them. They're well worth getting if you love Kaneko's art.

PERSONA 2 TSUMI AND BATSU: THE ERRORS OF THEIR YOUTH
(click on title for translations and tracklisting)

I could try to describe this drama CD to you, but I don't think I could do it justice. Usually I find drama CDs to be boring; it's just a bunch of the seiyuu reading their lines into a microphone. But this. This CD is so FUCKING HILARIOUS. There is a total of ONE serious track out of 19. Half of the rest are actually extremely catchy songs (the image songs for the main characters, basically) and the rest are extremely fucked-up humorous drama tracks. If you can, get ahold of this; I got mine from CDJapan.

[ WIND TIME BACKWARDS ]