My Childhood Video Game Stash has been Found!

 Been a while since I last posted.  Am still alive and well.  Thank you very much.

In September I made a trip back home to Canada with my family in tow to visit my parents.  It was the first time back in quite a while for me (and my son`s first time ever).  After getting over the emotional greetings, etc one of the first things my parent`s said was "There is a huge stack of your junk in our garage.  Do something about that."

While most of my childhood possessions are long gone, a selection of my old treasures has somehow managed to survive multiple moves over the decades and remain packed up in plastic bins at mom and dad's place.  And as I happily discovered while going through the boxes my childhood video games were among the survivors.

My NES Action set, still in its box, was among the first things I fished out (but forgot to take a picture of).  I didn't have a chance to plug it in so not sure if it still works, but along with it I also found my complete library of NES games, pictured above.  Double Dragon III, Shinobi, TMNT, Operation Wolf and the SMB/Duck Hunt cart that came with the console.  Yup a grand total of 5 carts that I put together over several years.  Sitting as I am now on a pile of hundreds of Famicom games, its hard to imagine how I managed to get so much entertainment out of these 5 carts back in the day, but I remember very clearly that I did.  The fact that these cost $40-$50 each in 1980s dollars, which represented several months worth of allowances for my 10 year old self no doubt explains that.

In another box I found an earlier era of my childhood video game collection, my Commodore Vic-20, complete with all the games.

 My dad bought this in about 1982 at Canadian Tire, which at the time included its own store-branded software set with each purchase. I still have the Canadian Tire card that it came with, which I think is really neat:

 The Vic-20 operated games either in cartridge form or in tape cassette form if you had the Cassette Unit, which we did (and still do).

 The computer itself is built into the keyboard and I remember we used to have it hooked up to a 14 inch TV in our kitchen throughout the early 80s.

 My joystick!!  Covered in dust but still existing after all these years.  Oh the fun I had with this.  That fire button hasn't been used to shoot on-screen aliens in about 25 years. 

 These are the cartridge games I had.  All of them except Visible Solar System I played a lot. As you can tell, I liked space themed shooting games as a kid.  I wish they had made a Famicom version of Gorf, that was an awesome game. 

 Still had the manual for Avenger in the box, its basically Space Invaders.

 This was our cassette tape software.  $99.95 for 6 cassette tapes.  In 1982 Canadian dollars that represented a fairly major family purchase.  I didn't play these as much as the cartridges since they took longer to load, but I remember having fun with some of these.

 Ah the Cassette Unit. 

I also found in the box a pile of floppy disk games for the Apple IIC, the computer that eventually replaced the Vic-20 as our official family computer in about 1987 or thereabouts.  While I had saved the software for it, the Apple IIC itself is no longer around, probably a victim of its own bulkiness.

I'd like to say that I was able to hook these up and play with them but I unfortunately didn't have time.  Nor did I have space in my luggage to bring them back to Japan with me.  I can at least say, however, that they are still safe.  After some negotiation with my parents I was able to secure the continued use of some storage space in their garage for the indefinite future (in exchange for my agreement to get rid of a lot of other stuff: sorry baseball card collection and all of my old books).  So they remain in Canada, awaiting my return.  Someday I shall return for you, childhood video game collection, and we shall play together again, probably when my son is old enough and my apartment big enough to house you.

Checking in

It has been a few months since my last post.  If anybody is still reading, don`t worry, I am not dead.  I am just a father.

My son is now 10 months old and the old saying about your children becoming your only hobby because they kill all your other hobbies is basically true.  I don`t think I have played any video games since he was born (save testing some that I sold, but basically that just involves me putting the cart in to see if the game loads and no more).

To be honest, I haven`t missed them much - playing with the little guy and watching him grow day by day is by far the funnest thing I have ever done.  Suddenly I find myself finding it hard to imagine having a hobby that wouldn`t include him.So now my hobby is reading Thomas the Tank Engine books to a little guy who can`t speak yet but absolutely LOVES it when I make a toot-toot sound for Thomas.  Hard to beat that.

Blogging is, along with video games, one of those hobbies that has had to take a back seat as a result, hence the lack of posts here.  At the moment he is sleeping so I have a few minutes before I pass out from exhaustion to compose this post (ever tried spending a day carrying a 10kg bag of potatoes around?  Give it a try and you`ll understand).  I`m not sure how often I will be able to post though, mainly because I haven`t got much to write about. Its incredibly difficult to generate content for a video game blog when you aren`t playing video games.  I am not declaring the blog closed though, I have too strong an attachment to it to do that.  When my son gets old enough to play I might start back into video games again. I hope he`ll like the Famicom classics because thats what we`ll be playing.  And maybe that will generate some interesting material for posts.

In the interim I will try to find some time to devote to posts whenever I have a minute.  I do at least get the chance to stop at game shops on the way home from work once every month or two.  I don`t buy stuff much anymore, nothing like the glory days in Fukuoka 4 or 5 years ago, but I still like to look.  When I find something interesting, I`ll try to let you know on here!

Some Famicom Playing Cards - Mach Rider Style

 Famicomblog is not dead!  Its owner and curator does, however, have a 6 month old baby at home to keep him occupied, leaving precious little time for blogging. 

I do have a few minutes to spare here though so I thought I would use it to introduce one of my more interesting Famicom ephemera additions - a pack of Mach Rider playing cards.

These are pretty neat, they seem to have been issued by Nintendo back in the 1980s.  I am not sure how many different games they released packs of cards for, but I have also seen Spartan X ones out there.  They come in a nice plastic Family Computer case that is blue on the bottom with the Nintendo logo in the middle:

Open it up and you have a deck of cards ready to play poker or whatever:

If your pack is new like this one it will also come with a special stamp on it:

There used to be a tax levied on playing cards and these stamps, issued by the government, had to be applied to all decks of playing cards as proof that the "Trump Tax" had been paid.  You don't see playing cards in stores with these stamps anymore so I assume the tax was abolished at some point, but I think it adds a layer of interest to these cards.

I will try to start updating the blog a bit more regularly from now on but we will see how that goes.....

A Minor Quibble with the Festering Cesspool of Racism that is Japan's Yahoo Auctions

Rant time.  Sorry, but I'm pissed.

I was cruising Yahoo Auctions earlier today and was about to put a bid in on a Famicom game from this seller by the name of gs76u87o.  

Then I stopped because I wasn't allowed to.  Not because I have any problems with my feedback.  Not because I couldn't pay promptly.  Not because of anything I had done or would do.

The reason I couldn't put a bid in on the game was because gs76u87o is a piece of racist garbage.

If you can read Japanese and take a look at any of his listings, he openly states that he won't deal with foreigners.  Note that the language makes it clear that he isn't referring to people living overseas - which would be OK since most sellers only ship within Japan for a variety of legitimate reasons.  No, he means anyone who is not ethnically Japanese he won't deal with regardless of where they live.

While not in the majority, it is disturbingly common to find this sort of racism being openly displayed by sellers on Yahoo Auctions.  It probably doesn't get commented on much since these things are always written in Japanese so most foreigners don't notice and it has less visceral impact than seeing "Japanese people only" written in English..   

It pisses me off that Yahoo Japan - a major company if there ever was one - allows this open type of racial discrimination to go on.  If an Ebay seller put up a condition saying "Only white people can bid on my stuff, if I find out you aren't white, I will leave negative feedback and blacklist you" you can imagine the shitstorm that would happen.  That guy would not have an Ebay account for long.  On Yahoo Auctions though it is totally OK and good luck trying to complain about it.

This sort of shit is, while not an everyday thing, something that foreign residents of Japan do have to put up with in various situations.  The only time it ever really causes a stir is when the perpetrators make the mistake of expressing their racism in English - as was the case with the incident in the photo at the top of this page (which occurred at a pro soccer game - the team actually allowed that banner to be hung in the stadium for the duration of the game and were only punished by the league after an outcry following the photo showing up online). 

So anyway, what was my point?  Fuck you  gs76u87o I guess is obvious, but also fuck you Yahoo Japan for allowing this shit to exist on your service that I AM FUCKING PAYING YOU TO PROVIDE TO ME and have a LEGITIMATE EXPECTATION THAT MY ETHNICITY WILL NOT PRECLUDE ME FROM FUCKING USING IT.

Sorry for the all caps, but that really needed to be emphasized.

Famicom Price Information Part 2

Last week I presented a list of sale prices from a massive auction that is taking place on Yahoo Auctions of CIB Famicom games.  The seller is putting up over 1000 CIB Famicom games (which would be almost all of them, possibly all) at a rate of 300 per week.  In the first sale, 88 of the games fetched prices over 5000 yen and I listed alll of those.  The highlights were Recca Summer Carnival and Battle Formula, which both sold for a little over 100,000 yen each.

Yesterday round 2 of the auction finished and here I present the same thing - a list of the prices of all the games that went for over 5000 yen.

This week the results weren't as spectacular as last, in part because there were fewer big ticket items in this one. Only 57 games went for over 5000 yen, and most of those went for under 10000 yen.  Not a single game went for over 50,000 yen in this week's group, but there were a few interesting highlights.

First off, the number one game was probably one you have never heard of - Karaoke Studio Top Hit 20 Vol. 2 - which went for 46,000 yen.  That is a game made for the Karaoke Studio microphone accessory and is extremely hard to find CIB (or loose for that matter).  One interesting aspect of that game landing at number 1 is that it is a game that is probably of no interest to people outside of Japan.  One question people have been asking is the degree to which Famicom game prices are driven mainly by foreigners buying stuff up.  A karaoke game like that, which is more or less unknown outside of Japan and of little interest (its all in Japanese) almost undoubtedly went to a Japanese collector, so the domestic market seems to be driving the prices too.

Number 2 on the list was the much more familiar Battletoads, which went for 30,000 yen (A few years ago I sold a CIB copy of that game for just $35, albeit with a rougher box.  I could kill my previous self for that act of stupidity).

There were a few games whose prices went for higher than I would have thought.  Prisoner of War is a bit hard to find, but it surprised me to find it in the top 10 selling for more than Over Horizon.

A few games actually sold for prices which might be considered quite cheap.  Barely making hte 5000 yen cut this week was Uchu Keibitai SDF at exactly 5,000 yen.  That is a pretty popular and, while not rare, it isn't particularly easy to find.  It must have slipped under the radar. 2010 Street Fighter and Abadox also went for lower than I thought they would.

Its also evident that new stuff was selling for a premium as most of the new games sold for prices higher, relative to the popularity/rarity of the game, than I would have thought.

The seller hasn't started round 3 yet but when he does, I'll post the results here.

Karaoke Studio Top Hit 20 Vol 2	46000
Battletoads	30000
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles	29000
Solbrain	27500
Metal Storm	23200
Prisoner of War	22600
Over Horizon	21000
Goal!	20500
Eight Eyes	18300	New
Metal Fighter My	16500
Reigendoushi	16000
Yancha Maru 3	15550	New
Robocco Wars	14500	New
Samurai Pizza Cats	14500
Crisis Force	14500
Ninja Crusaders	12600
Kyouryuu Sentai Juu Ranger	12500
Guardic Gaiden	12100
Terminator 2	11700	New
Yancha Maru	11500	(with stickers)
Millipede	11100
Donkey Kong (Silver box)	10001
Saiyuki World	9851
Holy Diver	9850
Gun Nac	9850
RAF	9750
Akumajou Densetsu	9750
Wanpaku Kokun no Gourmet World	9038
Dragon Fighter	8750
Cosmo Police Caravan	8590
Duck Tales 2	8250
Layla	8020
Donkey Kong Jr (Silver box)	8000
Juju Densetsu	7800
Eggerland	7780
Magic Candle	7350	New
StarGate	7250
Duck Tales	7100
Gundam Wars (Datach)	7000	New
Western Kids	6950
Double Dragon 2	6851
Door Door	6750
Abadox	6500
Kamen no Ninja	6250	New
Yancha Maru 2	6080	New
Akumajo Special Boku Dracula Kun	6050
Chigoku Kyokuraku Maru	5800
Ice Climber	5750
2010 Street Fighter	5730
Sweet Home	5500
Tiny Toon Adventures 2	5251
Flying Hero	5250
Ultraman Club Kaijuu Daikessen	5250
Saizou	5220
Zombie Hunter	5100
Uchuu Keibitai SDF	5000
Ultraman Club (Datach)	5000	New

Yasuda Fire & Marine Safety Rally: Oh God, What Have I Done?

 Last night the two massive cardboard boxes pictured above arrived at my home.  They were heavy, I had to lug them in one by one from the doorway after the deliveryman, who had used a push cart to get them to my place, dropped them off.

I left them in our spare room until this morning when I cut them open and out poured:

Obviously, Famicom carts.

These two boxes between them contained 440 Famicom carts, which is by far the most I have ever acquired at one time. 

Why would I, a person who already has a gigantic mountain of Famicom carts, buy 440 more of them?  This is where the ridiculous calculations of the serious (but woefully underfunded) collector come in.  As it says in the blog description, I am actively trying to put together an entire set of Famicom carts. That is an expensive proposition since a few of the games are seriously rare and expensive to find.

Out of the 440 carts in these two box, 438 of them were ones that I already had.  Of the remaining 2 that I needed, one was relatively easy to find on its own, but the other was one of the rarest and most expensive Famicom carts out there and basically it was the sole objective I had in mind when bidding on this lot.

Meet the newest addition to my Famicom collection.  Yasuda Fire & Marine Safety Rally. 

 This game probably has a bit of an interesting story to it but I have to admit to having some trouble tracking down what exactly that is.  It was not sold in stores but rather it was distributed by the Yasuda insurance company in 1989.  It seems there were probably only a few hundred distributed.  Beyond that, the Japanese language internet isn`t telling me much - particularly I am interested in finding out how it was distributed.  Looks like something that might have been given out at a company event a la Pepsi Invaders for the Atari 2600 but I`m not sure.

Originally the game came with a plastic case and a map.  Finding one complete, particularly with the map, is extremely difficult and there may only be a handful in existence.  Loose copies like mine are a bit easier to come by but still command top dollar on their own - consensus seems to be in the $300-$500 range.  Mandarake has a copy with the box, but no map, for 84,000 yen while Super Potato wants 170,640 Yen for a copy with both box and map.

So these prices were way more than I could possibly justify spending on one game.  On 440 games though I could sort of justify dropping a somewhat sizeable load of cash, in the hope that by selling the 438 that I don`t need I could get back most of what I spent.

So I can cross one of the big ticket items off of my list of needed games.  Oh and if anyone is in the market for Famicom games, uh (cough cough) , I`ll probably be updating my sales thread over on Famicom World with about 438 or so carts sometime soon.

Interesting find: Atari 2800 Discovery?

I just picked the above Atari 2600 game up off of Yahoo Auctions.  Gangster Alley is the name, shooting is the game.  I am always on the prowl for Atari 2600 games to feed to my (admittedly difficult to use but nonetheless much beloved) Atari 2800 system.

This random Atari 2600 game though I think might be a really interesting discovery, a piece of video game history that I haven't been able to track any information down on the internet.  It therefore intrigues me and I want to write a bit about it here.

First to rewind a bit.  The Atari 2800 was Atari's disastrous attempt to introduce the 2600 to the Japanese market.  They chose 1983 to do so, the same year the Famicom came out.  You can guess who won that battle.  So few Atari 2800s were sold that it is quite a rare console to find today.

The 2800's lifespan was so short that only 30 titles were officially released for it.  These were all Atari 2600 carts that had Japan-specific boxes and manuals made for them, which are pretty cool and, like the console, very hard to find.  Well, the loose carts are indistinguishable from 2600 carts, so really its just the boxes and manuals for the games that are rare.

This brings me to my new copy of Gangster Alley.  Take a look at this list of Atari 2800 games.  Note that Gangster Alley is not on it.

Now take a look at that box.  Note that everything about it is the same as the Atari 2600 box for that game.  Except the lower right hand corner, which has a label which says:

アタリ2800用
ビデオゲーム カートリジ

("Video Game Cartridge for use with the Atari 2800")

This seems to have been an Atari 2600 game that did not get a re-make for its box art but nonetheless was released in Japan for the 2800 with just a sticker applied to the box.  I have looked around the internet, both English and Japanese (incidentally Japanese people almost never write or blog about the Atari 2800, it was that unpopular here) but haven't been able to come up with any information about this.  It makes me wonder what other Atari 2600 games in addition to the standard 30 might have been released here.

Any Atari experts out there know anything about this?

Some Interesting Famicom Price Information: 88 Games Worth More than 5000 Yen

 As I mentioned in my last post, a seller on Yahoo Auctions has been putting up an amazing collection of CIB Famicom games with low starting bids.  In fact he seems to be putting an almost complete set (over 1,000 games according to him and he has put up 600 different ones so far) - all CIB and all in nice condition.

Since an opportunity like this only comes once in a while, I thought this would provide a useful bit of information to record - just how much are all of these games, being auctioned at (almost) the same time in almost the same condition by the same guy going for?

While one sale isn`t enough information to form the basis for a price guide, at least this will give us a hint of what these games are roughly worth - virtually all the games got a fair amount of bidding so we know there weren`t any expensive ones going for unrealistically low prices, while at the same time the low starting bids meant no unrealistically high prices set by the seller (though of course that doesn`t mean everyone was bidding rationally).

The seller hasn`t quite been selling them all at once, in the first round he auctioned off 300 (and has a second round of 300 which will finish next week).  The first round finished last night and these are the games which sold for over 5000 yen, which accounted for 88 out of the 300.  I cut them off at 5000 yen partly to save myself some time and partly because the more expensive ones, having gotten the most bids and most attention from buyers, probably went for prices closer to their actual value.

I have listed these below, in order from most to least expensive.  The values are in Yen and do not include shipping (which would have added 164 or 510 yen depending on the method of shipping chosen).  To get a rough idea of the value in US $, the exchange rate at the time of the auction was about 115 Yen to the Dollar.

All games are CIB and, while I didn`t closely look at all the pictures, the ones I did inspect were all in very good condition.  Some of them were sold as new or never used, these are marked with `New` after the price.

There are a few interesting things.  The most expensive game was Summer Carnival Recca at 104800 yen, almost one thousand dollars.  Battle Formula, another rarity, was a close second and the only other one to breach the 100,000 Yen barrier.  Taking third place was a game I had never heard of for the Datach called Battle Rush, which apparently is also quite hard to find CIB.  Kung Fu (the scarce variant of Spartan X), Snow Bros and Lickle all got over 50,000, which isn`t surprising as they are all quite hard to find.

One game that did surprise me was #10, Double Dragon which sold for a whopping 36100 Yen.  That is a great game but by no means is it rare (though CIB copies in nice shape are a bit hard to come by).  It seems totally out of place wedged in between Adventure Island 4 and Moon Crystal, both of which are extremely hard to find.  I have seen slightly worn copies selling at Mandarake for about 1/10th that price.

There are a few other super common games that made the list - Dragon Ball Shinryuu no Nazo, Kakefu Kun and Saint Seya Goukin Densetsu seem completely out of place on a valuable game list but they were all new which might explain it (though I still think they went for too much). Mitsume ga Toru, a hard to find and very popular game, also seems out of place right next to Milon no Daibouken, which is a good game but extremely common.

There don`t seem to have been any steals among the games on this list (the ones that went under 5,000 yen were mostly unsurprising too).  Kage and Taiku no Gen San seem a bit lower on the list than I think they deserve, but the prices paid for them aren`t much different from what they go for in shops.

I`ll update this again next week when round 2 of the sale finishes.

Summer Carnival 92 Recca	104800
Battle Formula	101100
Battle Rush (Datach)	81550
Kung Fu	61000
Snow Bros	55300
Lickle	50111
Guevara	45100
Gimmick!	44100
Adventure Island 4	39000	New
Double Dragon	36100
Moon Crystal	34700
Chip and Dale's Adventure	32700
Banana Oushi Daibouken	32100	New
Bubble Bobble 2	30200
Contra	29100
Gold Punch Out	28500
Yu Yu Hakusho (Datach)	25500
Magical Doropie	22500
Doki Doki Yuenchi	21500
AnpanMan no Hiragana Daisuki	20500
Chip and Dale's Adventure 2	20100
Rockman	18600
Donald Land	18500
Nekketsu Street Baseketball	18060
Spartan X 2	16015
Kyoro Chan Land	15700
Taiku no Gen San 2	15200
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2	14700	New
Spelunker (with POP)	14500
The Empire Strikes Back	14300
Kakefu Kun	13600	New
Final Mission	13200
Sword Master	13111	New
Star Wars (Victor)	13060
Bucky O'Hare	13001
Family School	12600
Mike Tyson Punch Out	12200
Super Contra	12100
Choujin Sentai Jetman	12050	New
Bazolda	11600
Fushigi no Umi no Nadia	11200
Dragon Ball Shinryuu no Nazo	11166	New
Adventures of Lolo 2	11100
Gekitotsu Macho Man	11015	New
Rockman 2	10600
Bomber Man	10600	New
Idol Hakkenden	10550
Nakayoshi to Isshou	10500
Chaos World	10000
Mitsume ga Toru	10000
Milon no Daibouken	9649	New
Joust	9500
Mighty Final Fight	9050	New
Kage	8851
Kawa no Nushu Tsuri	8450	New
Hoshi wo Miru Hito	8000
Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru	7850
Bikkuriman World	7750	New
Popeye (silver box)	7501
Rockboard	7250	New
Sqoon	7150	New
Tatakai no Banka	7150
Mother	7150
Donkey Kong Jr Math	7050
Rokdenashi Blues	6850
Saint Seya Goukin Densetsu	6511
Moai Kun	6449	New
Taiku no Gen San	6350
Chiki Chiki Machine	6265
Ninja Ryukenden	6252
Moeru Onisan	6250
Robocop 2	6150
Max Warrior	6150	New
Mickey Mouse 3 Yume Fusen	6100	New
Dragon Slayer	6099
Balloon Fight	6050
Zelda no Densetsu	6050
Tom and Jerry	5761
Space Hunter	5750
Rockman 6	5750
Ninja Ryukenden 3	5600	New
Mario Bros (silver box)	5510
Robocop	5350
Bio Senshi Dan	5250	New
Red Arima 2	5250	New
Tashiro Masashi Princess ga Ippai	5000
Ushi Ototora	5000

Yahoo Auctions: Somebody auctioning off an entire CIB collection of Famicom carts?

I was browsing through the Famicom listings on Yahoo Auctions yesterday when I noticed one seller, mad-masax, was without much fanfare putting up what looks like it may be one of the most impressive Famicom sales ever.

Currently he has 280 listings, each of them a different CIB Famicom game with a starting bid of 300 yen (about $3). The selection he has so far is crazy, including some of the most sought after, hard to find titles out there - Battle Formula, Lickle, Moon Crystal, Gimmick, Recca, Snow Bros, Adventure Island 4, Kung Fu, Magical Doropie, etc etc.  All CIB and all look like they are in (or near) top condition.

The thing that really teases me is that in the description he says he is planning to auction off a little over 1000 different games.  Given that there are only 1051 (give or take) official Famicom carts out there, and also given the insane quantity of rarities he already has listed, this may mean that this seller is breaking up an entire, complete set of Famicom carts - all CIB!  I should note that the seller doesn`t actually claim to be selling a complete set, but it looks like he might have one (or something very close to it).

A couple of years ago somebody did something similar on Ebay, where they received 1 million Euros for the whole collection (albeit that collection included some other consoles as well so it was quite a bit bigger and must go down as the most impressive Famicom sale ever). Other than that though, I`ve never seen a collection as impressive of this being sold off all at once.  Definitely something worth watching if you are curious about what CIB Famicom rarities will go for, Battle Formula is currently the leader in the bidding at a little over 50,000 yen.

(note - the photo at the top of this post isn`t from the auction, but from my own meagre CIB collection! To see what he has, click on the link above, its way more impressive).