Interior Decor: Famicom Carts as Parquet Flooring? Wallpaper? Coffee Tabletop?

 Some carts I have more copies of than others.  Super Mario Bros, Spartan X, Excitebike and Donkey Kong Jr for some reason I have quite a few of.  They were pretty popular games back in the day and are pretty good games to play now.  Still though, I don`t relaly need 12 copies of each even though I have that many.

When you have 12 of the same Famicom cart you can organize them into 3 by 4 squares which, when put together with other carts you have 12 of, can open up some interesting interior decorating ideas.

 Parquet type flooring is one.  You would have to put them under some sort of sturdy, extremely thick plexiglass to prevent them from being broken though, which would be expensive to install.  Maybe not the best idea.

 They would make for a great coffee-table top too, just put a piece of glass over them and you are golden.  Definitely a cool conversation starter.

They would also work pretty good as wallpaper if you had some way of attaching them to the wall wtihout damaging them.  Probably there is some way of doing this.  A wall covered with Famicom carts in 3 by 4 squares would look  pretty awesome.  If I ever open up a Famicom cafe, that is how I am going to decorate it.

The Cool World of Chirashi (Famicom and Movie Mini Posters)

One of the types of Famicom ephemera which I enjoy collecting the most are chirashi (mini posters/ flyers) that were handed out back in the day to advertise upcoming game releases. 

I like them mainly because they look cool and are the sort of thing that look good when framed and hanging on your wall.  Like my Gyrodine and Sky Destroyer ones, which have awesome artwork on them:

 I picked up a small lot of them off of Yahoo Auctions the other day that just arrived in the mail.  I`m pretty happy with them.  Most of them were actually Famicom Disk System games, like Metroid here which is probably my favorite of the lot:

And Super Mario Bros 2:

 Zelda no Densetsu:

 And a few others.

The only thing that I dislike about collecting Famicom chirashi is the price - they are pretty hard to find so the prices likewise tend to be on the high side and bargains are few and far between.  Still though its kind of worth it for the cool artwork.  They also have cool stuff on the back, like this one which explains how you can re-write games on disks:

 Collecting chirashi is actually one of my main non-Famicom collecting pursuits too.  In addition to advertising video games they are also used for a lot of other things, including movies.  Japanese movie chirashi are actually in some ways even cooler than  the Famicom chirashi.  Japanese movies almost always have unique paintings commissioned for them which are reproduced on the chirashi.  The artwork, which often combines familiar scenes with bold looking kanji, make them look pretty awesome.  Like this poster from You Only Live Twice, with the 007 in big type, with the title in kanji below.  Totally epic:

 Same with this old school Battle Star Galactica from the 70s:

 Mega Force!!!  If you haven`t seen this film, you don`t understand early 80s culture at all:

 Ditto with Mr. T in DC Cab.  Having him yell at you in Japanese is pretty priceless:

  I keep some of my favorite movie ones on the wall in the same room with the Famicom chrashi.  They are actually a bit smaller than the Famicom ones (B5 vs A4 size).  Bonus points to anyone who can identify the 5 films in this photo:

 The other cool thing about movie chirashi is that they are generally a lot cheaper than Famicom chirashi. I`m not sure why that is, but I guess there are more of them out there than the Famicom ones.  I think people have been collecting movie chirashi since the late 60s/early 70s so there are a lot of them that have been preserved, which probably helps to keep the prices reasonable.

Interesting Famicom Stuff: The Kid who Designed Brightman and his Gold Rockman 4 Cart

The man in the centre of the above picture is Yoshitaka Enomoto.  He is standing next to the host of a TV show called Nandemo Kanteidan, which is kind of a Japanese version of Antiques Roadshow.  It is a lot more flamboyant than the English version, but I watch it a lot.  Mostly people bring stuff like old samurai swords, paintings, bits of pottery, etc in to get told it is either worth a fortune or completely worthless.  The host, who is a comedian, cracks jokes throughout the show.

 Anyway, the particular episode that Mr. Enomoto appeared on was broadcast on Tuesday this week.  He brought an interesting bit of Famicom history and an interesting story with him.  The antique that he brought with him to have appraised was this (pardon the photo quality, I was just aiming my camera at the TV while the show was on):

A gold copy of Rockman 4!

If you aren`t familiar with hyper Famicom rarities, the gold Rockman 4 is probably the rarest Famicom cart out there, only 8 copies of it were ever made.  I have seen one in the wild once and posted about it here, at Super Potato in Osaka last year.

The carts were made as prizes for a competition that Capcom ran to have fans design the boss characters in the new Rockman game.  They received over 70,000 entries from fans across Japan, most of them little kids.  Only 8 were chosen and each of those 8 kids got a special gold copy of the game when it was released.

Its rarity means that it is super valuable and, as with a lot of these gold/silver special carts, it is pretty easy to fake (all you have to do is paint a regular Rockman 4 cart gold, though an expert would immediately recognize it since the underlying plastic is a different color from regular carts).

There was no danger that this one was a forgery, however, since Mr. Enomoto as a junior high school student back in 1991 was one of the lucky 8 winners of Capcom`s contest.  His design?  Brightman:

It was pretty neat to see that at least one copy of the gold Rockman 4s remains in the hands of the actual kid who won it back in the day.

The show did a little segment about the history of the Famicom, which was interesting but if you are reading this blog you probably already know the details so I won`t recap what they said.

 The segment ended with the show`s antique experts examining the game to make sure it was the real deal and see what condition it was in:

 And then they gave their opinion on its value.  In keeping with the greater flamboyance levels of the Japanese version of the show, they reveal this on a set that looks like it was borrowed from the Price is Right circa 1992.  They told him it was worth 400,000 yen (about $4,000 US).

 That sounds like a lot, but I was actually expecting them to say it was worth more.  The copy that I saw in Super Potato last year had a price of 628,000 yen (about $6300 US) on it, and this one looked like it was in every bit as good condition.  Maybe Super Potato is a bit overpriced?  Or the experts on Nandemo Kanteidan don`t quite know as much as they let on?  I guess it is hard to put a price on something so rare, they must hardly ever pop up for sale.

Its also interesting to wonder how many of the other 8 are still in the hands of their original owners?  Obviously the one in Super Potato isn`t, but what of the other 6?

As an interesting point to end the post on, the experience of designing Brightman as a kid seems to have had a major influence on Enomoto.  He went on to become a professional illustrator and has worked on a lot of animated TV shows and Manga!

The Original Mach Rider

 Despite the Fact that I am desperately trying to make some more living space in our apartment, every once in a while I find something so neat I cannot resist the temptation to splurge.  My most recent purchase: the original 1972 Mach Rider!

As usual, Erik over at Before Mario has beat me to writing a post about Mach Rider by about 3 years and I recommend checking his post out for the full scoop on the toy.  Just to recap the highlights here: It is based on a toy originally released by Hasbro under a different name.  It came in 3 colors (I got the yellow one, but I guess the photo gives that away).  Its basically a racing car that will fly at high speeds off a jump ramp.  It is awesome.

The box mine came in is a bit beat up, but its awesome nonetheless:

 Inside, its got a pretty cool control platform (the dials are stickers, but its got a gear shift that actually shifts):

 I don`t have the batteries or the floor space (or as Erik`s post suggests, a lack of pets) so I haven`t given it a try yet.  I`m satisfied for the moment to just look at it.  Mine came with an interesting bonus goodie, a chirashi (flyer) advertising Nintendo`s mini game series, which was being released at the same time.  Its a pretty neat piece of Nintendo history:

 And best of all, it came with the decals still unapplied.  I`m very tempted to use some of these on my bicycle that I commute to work on, but I won`t.

I`m pretty happy to have this in my collection, its one of the more colorful and neat toys (among many) that Nintendo released in the 60s and 70s which are pretty hard to find today.

Before finishing this post, I have to put a little plug in for a friend of mine over on Famicom World, Dire51 (aka Rob Strangman) who has just put out a book about retro gaming entitled "Memoirs of a Virtual Caveman".  If you are looking for some light retro game reading, give it a look!