0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Blademaker Arms Shop

         

Blademaker Arms Shop also known as just Blademaker is an adventure RPG with simulation, construction and strategy elements, it was developed and published by Shoeisha who were involved in the video game industry up until 2001.

 

In 2001 they moved away from video game development and publishing and into computer books, programming books and application tutorials. Blademaker Arms Shop was released on the 1^st of July 1999, the game was released exclusively in Japan

The story of Blademaker Arms Shop starts with the games protagonists father dying, leaving his son with his weapon shop business along with his debt, a debt that has to be paid within 6 months, with the game starting in January and running until June of the same year, if the player is unable to pay the debt by then, it will result in a game over for the player.

Each of the six months is divided up into 4 weeks, during that time the player is able to travel around their town buying materials and other items, as well as this the player is also able to make new weapons and tools. Depending on the players skill and the quality of the players reputation more customers will visit the shop

 

Controls for the game are very basic, actions are selected by using the Circle button, character movement is done by using the D-Pad, and to make your character run the X button is used. To show or hide text as well as accessing the games menu the triangle button is used.

When in a conversation with somebody the R1 and L1 shoulder buttons used together will fast forward the text. the game does feature combat, see above two screens, information on this game is quite hard to find so i can't expand on this section of the game.

This being a Japanese only released game critic reviews for it are none existence, as a result we will head over to GameFAQs for their user ratings. At GameFAQs we find Blademaker Arms Shop Is sitting at a very healthy 4.08/5 from a total of 6 user ratings.

Taking a closer look at these ratings, we find that Blademaker did not receive a user rating below a 3.5/5, with one user rating it at this score. The majority of users 4 in total rated the game at a very good 4/5, while the remaining user rated the game at an impressive 5/5.

Next up we have the games difficulty level, here we find only 4 users rated this category with a three to one split in favour of the game having a tough difficulty level. The remaining user  who did not think the game was tough, rated the game as having just the right difficulty level.

Lastly we have the games lifespan, and while only 5 users rated this category we have a good spread of game times on offer. The shortest time spent with the game Is one user spending 12 hours with the game, another user spent 20 hours playing, while two more spent a solid 40 hours with the game. The final user spent a whopping 80 hours playing the game, averaging out that comes to a lifespan of around 40.4 hours.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

 

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, who unsurprisingly don’t stock this Japanese only release. The same goes for Retrogamer.co.uk and eStarland.com, with both sites neither stocking or even listing this title. So we will quickly head over to Amazon.com In the hopes of finding at least one copy of the game.

Arriving at Amazon we do find the game, and we find a decent supply of the game on offer, as is quite common with Japanese only releases, the used quality on offer is pretty good, with a very good condition copy available for $9.82 and comes with free shipping.

Around five good conditions copies are available for between $10.37 and $13.40, and another very good condition copy available for $13.65 as well. From here used prices do start to climb in pricem with two very good condition copies available for $19.23 and $24.14. with the exception of an acceptable condition copy for $60 these are the final used copies available.

A good supply of new copies of the game are available from Amazon, new copy prices currently start from $31.81, this cheapest copy does come with free shipping, another four new copies come in at under $40, these four also come with free shipping as well. From here prices steadily rise up to their current high price of $57.55 for a new copy of the game.

  

Written by

P J Gibbon