Anime, Video Games, and Gambling
From about late 2020 to mid 2025 me and two of my close friends religiously played a game called All Star Tower Defence (ASTD) on Roblox. Its hard to explain how much of an impact the game had on my life, not in the way that it shaped me as a person in anyway, but simply because it was such a constant part of my life. I have such intense and specific memories of the game, often of very visceral emotional moments ranging from pure excitement to utter despair.
The game always revolved around a gacha, but compared to modern Roblox, it was very tame. Pity's were always attainable, and often a update would give enough rewards to pity for a vast majority of new characters. And most importantly you could evolve the lowest rarity characters into the highest rarity. Meaning that getting meta units didn't have to hinge on getting those 1-2% chance "spins". A concept that was dropped by pretty much every game after, only letting you evolve characters that were already 1% chances and lower. All of this to say that even though the game had those exploitative and annoying mechanics, it was never as oppressing as now day.
Moving on to what I actually wanted to touch on. I'm a huge fan collecting things, I love anime, and really enjoying working towards a goal. So grindy character collector games like ASTD were perfect for my brain. If you got a new rare unit, or if a new meta unit was added that was from an anime you had never seen before, it would incentivise watching that anime. Or if you were watching a new anime, you could look forward to characters being added to the game. It was a really fun way of constantly being able to engage with anime in way that fully satisfied me. And I REALLY miss it.
Astd is pretty much dead. The original game had so much content pumped into it, that the game quality standard dropped quite badly, not to mention a fucking god awful new player experience. And the sequel they made wasn't appealing to new players, or returning players outside of update week. All of the other anime character collectors are just as much of a time suck, and have seriously jarring and annoying gambling systems with the most absurd rates I have ever seen, I have lost this avenue of engaging with anime. An avenue which played such a big part of my life for the past 5 years.
I know in the modern gaming landscape a game that will satisfy me in the same way, without requiring me to degrade myself to the slot machine, will likely ever come again. When I tried a new anime tower defence yesterday, I had one goal. I just wanted to get Kaido. A character who is ALWAYS impossible to get in all of these games. I had an overwhelming urge to work until I get Kaido, and then hopefully never think about these stupid games again. To no ones surprise he is a secret unit, with no description on how to obtain, that I believe is already un-obtainable. Serves me right I guess.
However. I just saw the trailer for One Piece Grand Gourmet. An officially licensed restaurant management game, were an extremely large amount of different characters come into your restaurant as guests. And you bet your ASS I will be jumping up and down screaming when Kaido walks through my restaurant doors and into my guest unlock screen or whatever.
No one should read this. I don't think anyone will or should care. But what boils down to my quest to own a digital copy of Kaido from One Piece in a character collector game, means an absurd amount to me for some bizaare, very human reason.