Kansai Retro Game Shops 2: Den Den Town in Osaka

On the last day of our Kansai trip I finally was able to make the pilgrimage to Den Den Town, Osaka`s neighborhood dedicated to electronics (`Den` means electricity).  As such it is also the centre of Osaka`s retro gaming stores, thus making it worth a visit.

Den Den Town is in the centre of Osaka, about a fifteen minute or so walk from Shinsaibashi (where we stayed).  It is a surprisingly large neighborhood with one main street (pictured above) stretching for several blocks and a number of side and parrallel streets. It is a pretty bustling area.

Most of the shops don`t sell retro games, which isn`t surprising given that there are hundreds of stores in the area.  There are quite a few that do though, we wandered into one on the main street and found a wall full of Famicom carts:

The prices were on the high side, but they did have a TV hooked up to a Famiclone with Transofrmers Mystery of Comvoy so we had some fun with that for a while (frustration is sometimes an enjoyable pasttime).

One cool shop we found specializing in retro games was Retro TV Game Revivial:

It is a small-ish shop but packed to the roof with games.  They had a good selection of CIB Famicom games:

And a few retro consoles:

The prices weren`t too bad here.  There weren`t any absolute bargains but their prices were fair (unlike some of the other shops in the area which were way overpriced).

One cool thing I spotted were some old school Famicom lunch boxes, in Super Mario and Bouken Shima pattern:

They weren`t for sale but I thought they were pretty cool.

I haven`t mentioned the biggest shop I visited in Den Den Town yet because it will be the subject of my next post..... Super Potato!!