After another bulk order from Japan Yahoo Auctions thanks to the good people of Celga, it’s time to check out one of the consoles we purchased. It was a bit of a Bandai-fest with us purchasing a black Pippin, white Pippin & a Playdia. For this article we’ll have a look at the Playdia. The title wouldn’t make a lot of sense if we didn’t…
First & foremost, these things are CHEAP. This one was purchased with all the games for 12,249 円 which is pretty reasonable considering the prices you’ll pick one up for on Ebay. Just look up the 2 Dragonball Z games alone & see what you’ll be paying, & that’s without the console!! If you haven’t checked out the Japan Yahoo Auctions article I strongly suggest you do. After all, I wrote it!!
Anyway, let’s plug this bad boy in. Firstly, I’m a bit stuck for space, so the Playdia is going to have to sit on my pile of Super Play magazines & the step down adapter (remember, this is a 110v machine) will have to sit next to the TV.
One thing to I’d like to mention here is the weight of the machine. The console is rather light for what it is. This is compared to the Pippins (which we’ll cover in another article) which are actually quite hefty. Anyway, what to play? Let’s check out the games. By the way, they fit quite nicely on the bookshelf:
Let’s put in one of the main reasons I bought the console: Dragonball Z: Plan to Eradicate the Saiyajin Part 1.
Now to detach the controller that really doesn’t need detaching actually. It just sits there with nothing to hold it in place.
You can tell by the controller that this console isn’t designed for action games. A bulk of the games on the machine are video based or edutainment. There is one problem I have with the controller & that is the infra red sensor. Obviously you have to be sitting directly in front of the console for it to work. It’s a minor gripe however & one I found easy enough to deal with. Now to boot up Dragonball Z.
The video is quite nice running at noticeably fewer frames per second than your standard DVD. Remember this was 1994, so you have to make allowances. Anyway, Gohan has a bit of an accident involving firewood & Mr Popo comes down with a warning.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, Goku, Gohan & Piccolo head off to deal with the problem.
They split up & you have to guide all 3 of them to their goal. I’ll leave you here now as I want to find out what happens next & see when Vegeta & Trunks show up.
So that’s the Playdia. It’s a nice little system, but who is it for? Who should buy it & why? Well it’s not a machine I would recommend for the “gamer”. If you’re a collector however it’s a worthy addition to any collection. If you’re a Dragonball collector, well this is the only way to view the original “Dragonball Z: Plan to Eradicate the Saiyajin” short of forking out close to $1000 for the Japanese release of Dragonball Z: Dragonbox 2 which has it as an extra. Even then you miss out on the extra endings that only the game offers.
There is a cut down version of “Dragonball Z: Plan to Eradicate the Saiyajin” on “Dragonball Raging Blast 2” as an animated extra. Keep in mind however that this has been cut back to 30 minutes. The original Playdia version is about an hour in length.
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