Capcom puts out some lovely video game artbooks; a couple that I have in my own collection are The Art of Gyakuten Saiban and Devil May Cry Graphic File. Sometimes some of these artbooks come out in English, published by UDON Entertainment.
Last year, word got out that UDON would be bringing over R20, a 20th anniversary artbook covering the Mega Man (aka Rockman) and Mega Man X franchises. I’m not a Mega Man fan, but am always glad to see more translated video game artbooks. So anyway, upon scanning the latest release list at Midtown Comics’ site, I noticed that two UDON books are being shipped for this coming Wednesday: Mega Man Official Complete Works and Mega Man X Official Complete Works. Going by the books’ page counts, for whatever reason, UDON split up R20 into two separate volumes. Okay, I guess that makes sense, sort of. However, what really shocked me was the price: each book is $39.99.
Keep in mind that R20 normally costs ¥3,200 (US$35.36 as of this writing) and the prices on UDON’s other books tend to be reasonable. Yeeeah. Mega Man fans, I think someone’s trying to gouge you. Import the original or get UDON’s editions cheap/on sale, but please don’t pay full price for the latter or they might pull something like this again.