Little Samson GET! …Sort Of

Remember when I wrote about Little Samson and how sad I was because it was astronomically expensive and it was a game that meant a lot to me? Of course you do, it wasn’t even a month ago. Well, I solved my problem… I imported the Famicom version!

Because I like to torture myself over things I can’t have, I was doing a lot of research about the game and stumbled upon a short video by the Gaming Historian detailing the history and background of the game. He mentioned that the game had no voices or text, with the story told completely through cutscenes. A lightbulb flashed above my head just like in the cartoons… if the Japanese version was cheaper I could just get that instead!

I looked up 聖鈴伝説LICKLE (Seirei Densetsu LICKLE or Lickle: Legend of the Holy Bell) on Yahoo! Auctions Japan and placed a bid through Celga, a deputy service that allows filthy gaijin like me to buy goods from Japanese sites. While a copy of Little Samson will easily go for upwards of $400, I was able to procure a copy of 聖鈴伝説LICKLE with service fees and shipping from Japan coming up around $100. That’s a 75% savings!

So while technically it’s not the game I rented from the video store a bajillion times as a kid, it’s good enough for me. The price was right and I do really love how Famicom carts work. Regular reader and NES supergenius Hexen even directed me to a friend of his who hooked me up with a homemade Famicom-to-NES converter, which is rad because I was seriously considering buying a Famicom as well.

I still might, at some point.

Anyway, it hasn’t arrived yet but I’m super excited to FINALLY be able to play this again. Literally the only difference between the two versions is the title screen, and I don’t think the English letters are worth $300. But maybe that’s just me.