Saturday, July 14, 2012

Precious Namcot games.....Precious....

Some new `pieces` for my collection: the first four games Namcot released for the Famicom complete in box!
I`ve been wanting to get a set of the first 18 Namcot releases (they are numbered) complete in box ever since Bryan over on the Gay Gamer picked up a few of them a couple years back, the pictures he put up just knocked me out. I love the boxes on these, they hit all the right buttons for me: small, cardboard, colorful and with great, evocative imagery on the front.

I already had a couple from this series CIB but they are in the kind of `B-grade` level of games - stuff like Star Luster and Pro Wrestling. These ones however include Pac Man, the one I wanted the most! YES!

I found these on Yahoo Auction in part of a larger lot of boxed games. They set me back quite a bit, but I was massively impressed when I received them. Most of the other games in the lot were in beat up condition but these Namco ones are like new:
They only have some tiny wear on the flaps but other than that they are in perfect condition and look like they could have come directly off a department store shelf from 1984. The photos in the auction weren`t close up so I wasn`t expecting them to be this nice. In fact I was in a bit of a panic when I realized how beautiful they were as these are way too good to just casually toss on a random shelf with the rest of my games where they will get all wrinkled up (what I normally do with games). I had to empty out a plastic bin to put them in for safe keeping.

So my collection now has some showy mint stuff in it. I will not be putting these into hard plastic containers for disply or anything, but I will be keeping them in that plastic bin until I find some safe way of storing them.

Next on my wantlist for this series are Battle City, Warpman, Sky Kid and Burger Time - all of which have awesome cover art. And are probably going to cost me a bit of $$.

27 comments:

  1. It's always nice to have some boxed games. Me? The only games I have boxes for are Final Fantasy I+II and STED. Both RPGs.

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  2. Beautiful! This makes me want to get boxes for my blackbox nes games (I've got about 24/30 of them cart only, unfortunately Stack-Up is one of the ones I'm missing). Glad to see you blogging again.

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  3. SKyrunner - yeah, they are great. I like the cover art for STED, the blue and green art looks kind of cool!

    Jascony - thanks! I really like those Black box NES games, the simplicity of the design is really great.

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    1. Actually, the cart art and box art are completely different... the box art has the four playable characters in an action pose. Pretty good! I also found the cart art odd... there's a map in the background, but the game itself (or atleast the copy I bought) didn't have it. I don't know if it was just missing from the copy I got or if it's supposed to have a map, or what. Considering how scarce the manual was, I wouldn't be surprised if there was never a map...

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    2. Interesting. I only have the cart so I just assumed it was the same on the box. The box actually sounds better!

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  4. Gorgeous!
    And Mappy and Pac-Man are really fun to play I find them really easy to pick up and play during short pauses! :)

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  5. Me too, I actually like all of these games. The early Namco games on the Famicom are among the best ever released in my opinion. Galaga, Battle City, Sky Kid, Warpman - that series is just full of great games like that (though Star Luster is pretty dull).

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  6. Great pickups man..those boxes are so mint!

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  7. Those Namco boxes are the coolest when it comes to size and appearance, out of the original numbered 18 I've only got Pac-Land.

    The hard cases so far I happen to have only three: Youkai Douchuuki, Dragon Buster and Tensai Bakabon. Collecting all those Namco games has been some sort of goal for me until now.

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  8. Man, those 4 Namcot boxes look absolutely pristine!! Very nice score indeed.

    YHJP can be addictive for sure, but the proxies have somewhat killed the buzz in my opinion.

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  9. Man, those are some minty boxes! Puts to shame the general state of cardboard-boxed games on eBay in the West!

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  10. El Guapo - thanks!

    Kaibun - yeah, they are grea, aren`t they? I`ve seen the Pac Land one at my shop in town, it looks good too.

    Hollo- thanks. And yes it is insanely addictive. I have noticed that AV Famicoms and Twin Famicoms seem to be going for pretty high prices, I guess the proxies probably get a lot of requests for those!

    Sean - thanks, and yeah, I have seen the Ebay offerings. Not very good at all! Mind you Yahoo Auctions also seems to have a fair bit of junk too, I got really lucky with these ones.

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  11. You might as well get it Sean. The Pac Land in my local shop was sitting there collecting dust. I knew I just had to buy it eventually.

    People probably overlook this one because it ain't a classic like most Namco arcades, but it's just as fun. There's something that keeps bringing me back to those simpler, high score-oriented games.

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  12. LOL, no sooner said than done! I won a CIB copy of Pac Land on Yahoo Auctions last night! Should be here soon:) I like the game, once you get used to the unusual controls its pretty fun.

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  13. *Sniff* They're... beautiful...

    I really like the 80's graphic design aesthetic on the boxes, very neat especially with the cool original art and katakana font. I could hang them up and stare at them the whole day...

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  14. Thanks, Daniel. I agree, the 80s produced some amazing designs and these are high up on the list of greats!

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  15. Awesome! Don't know how I missed this when you first posted it. Anyway, I'm jealous of your Pac-Man box. Mine has writing on it :( I may actually pick up another should ever find on without writing :) Anyway, I agree with you about these early Namco(t) games for Famicom being awesome (second only to Nintendo's Pulse Line releases, IMO). I especially like Dig Dug, Mappy and Warpman :) Still need to add a few to my collection, though...

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  16. Thanks Bryan. They are indeed great. Dig Dug is another one that I really want to get.

    I also have a CIB set of the pulse line carts that I am working on, I will have to do a post about them too.

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  17. Can't wait to see that post, Sean. The only CIB Pulse Line games I have to get at this point are Donkey Kong Jr. Math and Popeye's English. Of course they're the most expensive and the most difficult to find. Oh, well!

    As for these Namco(t) games: My next purchases are sure to be Babel, Dig Dug II and Galaga, although I want them all in the end :)

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  18. Nice! Donkey Kong Jr. Math is one of the ones I need too, it seems to be a tough one to locate. Mario Bros is the only other one I need, and it isn`t too hard to find.

    Somehow I have actually come to own two CIB copies of Popeye`s English. One I found at Omocha Souko about a year ago and the other I got a few days ago in a lot I bought on Yahoo Auctions.

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  19. Sean, can you tell me what Namcot is? :/

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  20. Namcot (also known as Namco) is a Japanese video game maker.

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  21. I thought they were called Namco, not namcot

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    1. Namcot is their name for releases on the Famicom - NAMCO home entertainmenT. (Yes that's really how the name extends.)

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  22. Interesting philosophy they have there, I wonder what the NAMCO part stands for....

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    1. (NA)kamura
      (M)anufacturing
      (CO)mpany

      Put it together, it spells Namco.

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