{"id":82,"date":"2010-09-18T15:33:01","date_gmt":"2010-09-18T14:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicholsons.me\/blog\/?p=82"},"modified":"2023-11-25T07:40:21","modified_gmt":"2023-11-25T07:40:21","slug":"international-ish-batman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/?p=82","title":{"rendered":"International-ish Batman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>So I&#8217;ve been looking for Batman based things and more specifically Batman: Arkham Asylum \/ Arkham City based stuff since we left the UK and have to say it wasn&#8217;t going too well for quite a while.  In China I saw a person with a Batman T-shirt in the Forbidden City in Beijing but that was about it.  As they were a tourist I figured they probably didn&#8217;t count anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Interestingly there was almost no presence of games at all.  I managed to find a stall in a market with a Wii and a PS2 for sale but that&#8217;s about it. I didn&#8217;t ask if they&#8217;d been chipped but think they probably were (that would explain the lack of games shops!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Mongolia I found a small selection of PC games in a supermarket in Ulaan Baatar but again no Batman.  In the toys section I did find these &#8216;generic&#8217; super hero figures though:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/l_1600_1200_F3950C8F-3E4A-41E8-97DD-39E34EC9F646.jpeg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/l_1600_1200_F3950C8F-3E4A-41E8-97DD-39E34EC9F646.jpeg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>I couldn&#8217;t find any games in Russia either which surprised me, especially in Moscow and St Petersburg which are both full of very rich people.  Maybe I was looking in the wrong places?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, we&#8217;re in Finland now and Batman is back on the scene!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Firstly games shops exist again and I had no problem finding a copy of Batman in one such shop in Helsinki:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/p_1600_1200_2FDAB10C-DEF8-4917-99AC-73495AACF6F5.jpeg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/p_1600_1200_2FDAB10C-DEF8-4917-99AC-73495AACF6F5.jpeg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>That particular shop sold electronics, games, DVDs and cosmetics which I thought was pretty strange combination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also found this picture in a media photography museum (it also had a Moomin exhibition, which is what we had actually gone to see!):<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/p_1600_1200_D772B8A2-C5E2-4D79-8243-97D42E1E6D11.jpeg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/p_1600_1200_D772B8A2-C5E2-4D79-8243-97D42E1E6D11.jpeg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>I have no idea what it says but he appears to be selling some kind of &#8216;Bat-juice&#8217;?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally while we were in a supermarket (also in Helsinki) we found this:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/p_1600_1200_D8BF437D-D897-4B7B-BAF7-4C9D5801E486.jpeg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/p_1600_1200_D8BF437D-D897-4B7B-BAF7-4C9D5801E486.jpeg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/p_1600_1200_415D3BBA-263D-4BB2-A8DF-1F9A1C2CCD33.jpeg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/p_1600_1200_415D3BBA-263D-4BB2-A8DF-1F9A1C2CCD33.jpeg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Result!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Woohoo go Rocksteady!  I couldn&#8217;t understand the words but the pictures looked good (especially the massive close-ups of Jamie and Sefton &#8211; Rocksteady directors!)  I thought Harley&#8217;s pig-tails looked particularly physically realistic in the screenshots too!  I&#8217;m really looking forward to reading up on the game&#8217;s progress once we&#8217;re back in the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since we first saw that magazine cover (shortly after getting into Finland) we can&#8217;t seem to get away from it as it&#8217;s for sale in just about every shop with magazines in it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Is was interesting to see that games aren&#8217;t yet as truly global as film and music but, as pirated copies of most CD&#8217;s and DVD&#8217;s are readily available in all the Asian countries we visited, I&#8217;m not sure how much revenue the film\/music publishers are actually getting from the region anyway!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, in China where IP and copyright laws exist but are largely ignored.  While showing us around a busy market full of fake goods, mainly clothes but also things like &#8216;VAIO&#8217; laptops, our guide was proudly telling us that the fake goods manufactured there were of a higher quality than the originals so most people preferred them!  With attitudes like that stopping piracy is going to be pretty difficult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;ve been looking for Batman based things and more specifically Batman: Arkham Asylum \/ Arkham City based stuff since we left the UK and have to say it wasn&#8217;t going too well for quite a while. In China I saw a person with a Batman T-shirt in the Forbidden City in Beijing but that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/?p=82\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;International-ish Batman&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bens-posts","category-mega-trip-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152,"href":"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions\/152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blab.nicholfield.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}