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Sunday, February 01, 2009

Toy Review: Henshin Belt DX Decadriver

Blah, last week turned out to be horrible for trying to get anything done, so I'm making that the task for this coming week. I also vow that the next time a DX belt comes out, I'll try to review it on the same day!



Kamen Rider Decade Henshin Belt DX Decadriver

What can I say though, this thing is great. By now you've probably seen the videos and probably already ordered one anyway, so anything I say will be redundant. But that's never stopped me before!

First of, this is without a doubt the most expensive DX belt released thus far, with a SRP of ¥6,825. Of course thanks to the good people at Toys 'R Us, who always mark things down, I got mine for about ¥5,400. Obviously, for those reading this who aren't in Japan or don't get these sold locally at a reasonable price, it'll be more. I would say that if the belt itself (sans shipping) is running over $80, you probably don't ever want to go to amazon.jp to see how low it's been marked down (let's just say it was about half that a few days ago.)

But is it worth it? Indeed it is, although there's a catch I'll mention later. First of all, the box is roughly the same as the DX Sagarc Belt, so it's on the slimmer side. The contents are the belt buckle (with one attached belt strap), the other strap, the thingy you put on the back to keep the straps together, and the central white part of the buckle which houses all the electronics. You also get 10 Rider cards, and the instructions. As for the box itself, it's nice. It's a good, clean design that gets everybody on there and lets you know just what you're getting.

Compared to the Kiva belts from last year/early this year, this doesn't seem like much. Those gave you the belts plus all the Fuestles, and more. Kivat & his variants were arguably toys unto themselves. The IXA Knuckle that came with the belt saw a ton of action in the show, and was reproduced with the DX toy. Saga's had Sagarc with his funny little turntable feature, plus a weapon. Comparatively, you're not getting as much here... but good things come in small packages, and this belt packs a lot of features into a fairly straightforward system.

Let's start with the belt itself, fully assembled.



It's nice. It's easily my favorite-looking belt in a long time, with a simple design that reminds one of a couple older belts. The different Rider emblems around the center are awesome. But then, of course they are, because I thought of it! (Okay, sorta.)

The side green-red-blue circles are just for show, all the lights and sound come from the white part of the buckle. On a side note, I like how the green-red-blue is almost like a visual nod to the side containers of Stronger's belt.

As for operating the thing, that's easy. Pull the sides apart and the center buckle swings up.



Insert one of the Rider cards with the bar code facing up and the card back facing out, push the sides of the outer buckle together, and...



There we are! You get 10 cards with the belt and all 10 make the unique sound effects of the 10 main Heisei era Riders. There are some LEDs in the center buckle which light up the symbol on the card back, in time to the sound effects. It's all a neat piece of design.

The voice of the belt was a bit goofy at first, but I've gotten used to it to the point where I can say I really like it.



Whilst in "standby" mode of course, there's also a repeating sound effect as it waits for you to push the sides in. I always like that.



Here's that center buckle again, with the emblems. I like the plastic "glass" partition covering the belt. Surprisingly, the cards stay in no problem and I haven't had any slide out the side, despite the fact that there's nothing really keeping them in there (which is good, as it doesn't muck up the cards with noticeable streaks. As a card collector, I pay attention to stuff like that!)



And the cards themselves. This is where I get to the catch. The catch is basically that if you want to get maximum value out of this belt, get ready to be buying a lot of toys this year, or find some way to make your own cards (as some have done) to get all the proper sounds. The Final Form Ride figures will be including those cards. And as for most of the others...



All the cards sold with the toys can be used with the Ganbaride Card Machine game, and all the cards sold from that (and other toys) can be used with the belt. There's a lot of interconnectivity (for lack of a better term) going on. This is all great if you have easy access to Ganbaride and the other toys; not so much if you don't. The good thing is, most of the cards used on the show will be sold with toys, like the Advent and Rouze cards of the past, there's a lot of ones just made specifically for the game/card collectors/etc. At current press time, there's no word of individual packs of cards though, but I wouldn't rule it out entirely as a possibility.

The cool thing about all this is, I've already gotten the belt to say some other things. "ATTACK RIDE" and "FINAL RIDE" using some cards from a Ganbaride machine, and with the cards sold with the vinyl "Legend Rider Series" figures...



Yep! As the videos have shown, the belt is capable of saying the names of all the old Riders, even Shin, ZO & J! It doesn't have their specific sound effects, and they do all have em. Rider 1 & 2's are even different from each other! But hey, I'd rather have something rather than nothing, so this is a nice bonus. The belt has the capacity to string together sound effects in different orders apparently, so I really hope it's got "BLACK ATTACK" and "KAMEN RIDERDERMAN" phrases in there somewhere.

As for the cards with the belt, they're all "KAMEN RIDE". You can tell what's what by on the card's back.



In terms of size... I think it's "big enough", but then I'm fortunate that I can squeeze into these with just a velcro cable tie or two on the back to hold the straps together, so that's never really been an issue. It's roughly the size of last year's belt, which I think looks bigger because of the side Fuestle boxes. There's nothing on the sides of this one, but room for the upcoming RideBooker weapon. If they came out with another Complete Selection adult-size belt, I'd love it to be this one, but I wouldn't plan on it just yet. Den-O's was a freak of nature (the fact that we got it, not the belt itself) and the soon-to-be-released Hibiki tuning form thingy is made possibly only by way of Figure-Ou magazine and a lot of loyal fans.

In other words, if you're at all thinking of picking this one up... I would. Just don't pay too much for it.



All in all, it's a great belt that does a lot of stuff, if you have the right cards. Amassing those will be the hard part, but there's plenty of time to do that, because now matter how long Decade lasts, Ganbaride probably won't be going away anytime soon.

***

4 comments:

  1. yoh..can i know where you bought your deca driver..i'm also a huge fan of kamen rider decade..i'm from the philippines..

    ReplyDelete
  2. I got mine at Toys 'R Us here in Japan, but I highly recommend Hobby Link Japan for getting it from overseas:

    http://www.hlj.com/product/BAN955047

    Dunno if you could find it for cheaper online (or locally) though, but HLJ is fast & reliable.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Where do you guys buy the decade's belt?

    ReplyDelete