Went back to Fukuoka, Did some Game Shopping

 I was back in Fukuoka for a few days for some work related stuff a couple weeks ago.  I love that city so much, I can't believe its been 6 years since I left. They added a Godzilla to Canal City since I left:

Of course I had to check out good old Mandarake, which is located in a trendy neighborhood near Akasaka Station:

I got there at about 11:50AM, which is 10 minutes before they open so I had to wait outside the entrance for a bit.  I've never understood Mandarake's ridiculously short operating hours, they are only open 8 hours a day (12 to 8), which rules out both morning visits and late evening visits.  Its not like they are a little mom and pop shop, they are a huge chain with lots of employees!  Open up more!

I couldn't take any pictures inside but it was basically the same layout as I've detailed in previous posts here, which was nice.  The prices, as everywhere, have creeped up to levels much higher than they used to be, which was expected.  I was able to score one game I needed off my Famicom want list though: Star Wars!  Not the Namco version, which is one of my all time favorite Famicom games, but the other one put out by Victor.  Though not quite as quirky as the Namco version, I have wanted the Victor one for years.  I got their version of the Empire Strikes Back at Omocha Souko very early in my collecting days and I loved the game play on it.  But for some reason it took me a very long time to get the Star Wars version.  This is simply because it is a hard to find game (way rarer than the Namco version, which itself isn't super easy to find either) and I couldn't find any good deals.

So when I saw it on Mandarake's shelf for only 2700 Yen (with tax) I jumped all over it!

That would be my only game purchase in Fukuoka on this trip, but I also went to check out the Book Off in front of Hakata Station.

This was actually an unexpectedly pleasant surprise.  In 2011 I wrote a post about that location in which I basically savaged it for having bad games badly priced.  So my expectations were low going in.

Much to my surprise I found that they had completely changed the layout of the place and significantly expanded their toy/game section.  They have a decent little pile of Famicom carts in there, which is increasingly rare to find in Book Offs these days:

There weren't any particular bargain finds in there (oh how I looked) but the prices weren't outrageous either.  And they did have one Famicom bargain, a boxed AV Famicom for only 6300 Yen, which is a really good deal (I didn't buy it so if you are in Fukuoka and looking for one, get over there if its still available).

Anyway, I would add this as a place to check out if you are in Fukuoka since they might update their game pile every now and then and you might catch a deal.  They are right in front of Hakata Station so its pretty easy to hit (which is why I went there)!

Unfortunately I wasn't able to check out any of my other old haunts in Fukuoka to see if they were still in business.  Mainly this is due to my being public transport bound when visiting and a lot of those places need to be reached either by car or bicycle.  Maybe some day!

Back in Fukuoka Again: 007 has Become a Manga Souko

I just got back from a business trip to good old Fukuoka.  I head down there every once in a while and whenever I do I try to visit some of my old retro game stores.  In October I was able to pay Mandarake a visit and this time I was able to visit one of the old stores that I used to regularly visit: 007. 

Actually, I can`t really call it 007 anymore because the place was taken over by the chain Manga Souko and now goes by that name.  There is another Manga Souko in Dazaifu which I used to visit and had a great selection of Famicom games the last time I visited a couple of years ago so I was kind of interested in whether they would have changed anything.

In fact though it was basically the identical store just with a new name.  Which was kind of nice in a way.  007 is a special landmark in my Famicom life since it was there that I bought my very first Famicom cart ever, a copy of Clu Clu Land. 

That said, sadly I found that while racks of Famicom games were still there, they now have way fewer games than they did when I visited the store for the first time about 5 years ago.  This was basically it:

 That might look OK, but this is how many they used to have (and the below picture only shows about half of what they had):

 They still had a glass case for the good games, though they put some really odd games in there.  Why on earth they think Super Chinese 3 is a rarity that needs to be protected behind glass is a myster to me.  Mind you, 007 used to do the same so this isn`t really a new thing:

I do like the blue lighting and the little pictures of Famicom consoles, which were both there back when it was 007.

One odd thing they had was a TV with Rockman 3 hooked up.  I could hear the awesome BGM playing and it drew me to it.  I wanted to give it a play (playing video games in stores for some reason is way funner than playing them at home) but for some reason they had two PS1 controllers uselessly hanging down in front of it and no Famicom or Famiclone ones.

So it was kind of a bittersweet return to 007 for me. I`m glad that even though it is under new management the store basically looks the same, but a little sad that the Famicom selection is nowhere near what it used to be (and they didn`t have any Famicom consoles or controllers either this time). 

Return to the Fukuoka Famicom Shops

I just got back from an overnight business trip to the place where this blog began: beautiful Fukuoka!

I was there for a couple of meetings on Tuesday, but Wedensday morning and early afternoon I had to myself and decided to drop by good old Mandarake to see how things have changed there since I left.

I would have loved to have been able to do a thorough revisit to all the Famicom shops I described in loving detail in numerous posts on here back when I lived in Fukuoka but it wasn`t possible to do so with the time I had.  Sadly my favorite shop that I used to visit 3-4 times a week, Omocha Souko, went permanently out of business last year so the one place that more than any I wanted to see on my return could not be paid a visit.

Another issue was simply the fact that as a visitor to Fukuoka I did not have a bicycle, which was really instrumental in allowing me to visit all those awesome retro game shops, many of which were not easily accessible by public transport.

Anyway, I made sure that I would at least visit my favorite surviving Fukuoka Famicom shop on this visit and even booked a hotel (the Green Hotel if anyone is interested) that is literally next door to Mandarake.

Despite their no-photography policy I decided to take a few pics this time since even if they kicked me out its not like I visit there that often anymore.

Wall to wall CIB Famicom goodies, no other shop in Fukuoka comes close to matching this.  The blue sign there says they will pay 50,000 yen for a CIB copy of Kung Fu.

A few copies of Thunderbirds and Tomato Princess in the Salad Kingdomthere:

Oh and what is that at the end of the aisle?

Get a little closer:

The glass case with all the good Famicom stuff in it!!

About half of this stuff I remembered from my last visit, loads of CIB games for the Famicom and Super Famicom.  They have a CIB copy of that really rare silver Hot Scramble Z which they are selling for about 900 bucks.

Basically all that stuff was out of my price range, but I did pick up a few Famicom games. Mandarake generally has pretty good prices, at least at their Fukuoka branch, so I am always glad to walk out with a few new purchases.  I picked up CIB copies of Binary Land and Highway Star, which will go nicely with my collection.

The only other Famicom-related place I got a chance to visit was a Book Off next to Hakata Station.  I had actually profiled that one on here a couple of years ago in a post that consisted mainly of complaining about their outrageously high prices.

I was hoping they might have changed that problem and got a bit excited when I saw that they had moved the `old soft` section (which is where all pre-PS2 era games at Book Offs are kept, if they have any) and tidied it up a bit:

Unfortunately despite the facelift the prices were the same as usual.  They even still had the exact same copy of Devil World priced at 1550 yen (about 2-3 times what its worth) that I had complained about in that post 2 years ago:

That will probably always be there!

Anyway, it was nice to go back to Fukuoka, I really do miss the place. 

Japanese Retro Game Shops in Decline?

The above is probably the last photo that will ever be taken of Omocha Souko, my favorite game shop ever, which sadly closed in April. Within a few days all that will be left of that massive beautiful complex will be a vacant lot waiting to have a new pachinko parlor built on it.
Now check this out, the latest dental clinic in town. Open 7 days a week. Located in Ropponmatsu within easy walking distance of the subway station.
Er....why am I showing you a picture of a dental clinic?

Well, I actually went out to Ropponmatsu yesterday specifically because I was nearby and there was a retro game shop that I wanted to do a post about. I hadn`t been there in a couple of years, but the last time I visited they had a decent little Famicom game selection that I thought would provide good material for some photos.

Only when I got there yesterday I found that sometime during the last two years that the little game shop had closed down and been replaced with a dental clinic.

These two closures don`t seem to be isolated incidents but part of a growing trend of retro game store closures. No sooner had I posted about Omocha Souko`s closure than a reader alerted me to the fact that they had also closed their Maebaru store (out in the west end of Fukuoka) a year or two earlier. That was a surprise as I had visited that place once (without camera, hence no post about it here) and found it to have an excellent Famicom selection. Also as I reported in 2010 all of the GEO locations in Fukuoka, most of which used to have really good selections of Famicom and other retro games, completely liquidated all of their retro games and now only stock current (post-PS2) stuff.

I`m not the only one to notice this, Hollis on Super Gaijin Ultra Gamer also reported a couple months ago that his favorite retro game shop was getting out of the business.

While all these closures have been going on, no new shops have been opening up to take their place, meaning that it is getting harder and harder to find retro games `in the wild` here. Not impossible as there are still a good number of shops out there, but the herd is being thinned at an alarming rate.

I`m not sure what the immediate cause of this is. Internet sales providing too much competition? Maybe. Bad economy? Probably. People losing interest in the Famicom and retro gaming? NEVER!

Anyway, I hope the trend reverses itself. In all likelihood I was a little spoiled for a couple of years there between 2008 and 2010 when this city was awash with shops selling Famicom stuff. There may have been more than the market could handle. Kind of like the way in the early 1990s in North America every city breifly had about 50 baseball card and comic book shops, almost all of which suddenly went out of business by about 1995 or so. Well, I HOPE it isn`t that bad as I need these shops to be around, they are the lifeblood of my collection!

Anybody else out there in Japan noticed a similar trend of retro game shop closures? Or, I hope, openings?

Edited July 4 to add:  Found yet another retro game shop that has bitten the dust yesterday.

Japanese Retro Game Shops in Decline?

The above is probably the last photo that will ever be taken of Omocha Souko, my favorite game shop ever, which sadly closed in April. Within a few days all that will be left of that massive beautiful complex will be a vacant lot waiting to have a new pachinko parlor built on it.

Now check this out, the latest dental clinic in town. Open 7 days a week. Located in Ropponmatsu within easy walking distance of the subway station.
Er....why am I showing you a picture of a dental clinic?

Well, I actually went out to Ropponmatsu yesterday specifically because I was nearby and there was a retro game shop that I wanted to do a post about. I hadn`t been there in a couple of years, but the last time I visited they had a decent little Famicom game selection that I thought would provide good material for some photos.

Only when I got there yesterday I found that sometime during the last two years that the little game shop had closed down and been replaced with a dental clinic.

These two closures don`t seem to be isolated incidents but part of a growing trend of retro game store closures. No sooner had I posted about Omocha Souko`s closure than a reader alerted me to the fact that they had also closed their Maebaru store (out in the west end of Fukuoka) a year or two earlier. That was a surprise as I had visited that place once (without camera, hence no post about it here) and found it to have an excellent Famicom selection. Also as I reported in 2010 all of the GEO locations in Fukuoka, most of which used to have really good selections of Famicom and other retro games, completely liquidated all of their retro games and now only stock current (post-PS2) stuff.

I`m not the only one to notice this, Hollis on Super Gaijin Ultra Gamer also reported a couple months ago that his favorite retro game shop was getting out of the business.

While all these closures have been going on, no new shops have been opening up to take their place, meaning that it is getting harder and harder to find retro games `in the wild` here. Not impossible as there are still a good number of shops out there, but the herd is being thinned at an alarming rate.

I`m not sure what the immediate cause of this is. Internet sales providing too much competition? Maybe. Bad economy? Probably. People losing interest in the Famicom and retro gaming? NEVER!

Anyway, I hope the trend reverses itself. In all likelihood I was a little spoiled for a couple of years there between 2008 and 2010 when this city was awash with shops selling Famicom stuff. There may have been more than the market could handle. Kind of like the way in the early 1990s in North America every city breifly had about 50 baseball card and comic book shops, almost all of which suddenly went out of business by about 1995 or so. Well, I HOPE it isn`t that bad as I need these shops to be around, they are the lifeblood of my collection!

Anybody else out there in Japan noticed a similar trend of retro game shop closures? Or, I hope, openings?

Lights Out Omocha Souko

Three years ago the entrance to Omocha Souko looked like the above photo. Bright and lively. Today it looks like this, dead and dark:

Omocha Souko was a special place
From the excitement of the Famicom chace

To the agony of missing a cheap deal
That made me cry over a meal

When that place the retro gamer called heaven
Was lost in 1957*

*(actually lost in 2012, but its hard to find a word that rhymes with twelve and I was stealing this from a poem about Ebbets field which closed in 1957 and....anyway, never mind).

I have been meaning to do a final post in my series on the closing of Omocha Souko for over a month now. Before I could do that though I felt I needed one event to occur so as to bring a sense of closure to me, that event being the store actually closing.

I had to wait a while for that to happen because in typical Omocha Souko fashion (for all my love of the place it really was poorly managed) they couldn`t even go out of business right. After telling everyone they were going out of business on April 1st they just kept the place open for a few weeks longer in an attempt to get rid of whatever remaining crap they could sell.

The long, drawn out process was a pathetic site to see. A store slowly deteriorating - shelves emptying and not getting re-stocked, displays getting knocked over and nobody bothering to tidy them up.
It had a sort of poetic quality to it (hence the above poem.), with all the broken pieces nobody wanted left to sadly await their fate on the shelves. Headless nymphs:
Armless ballplayers:
Fallen angels:
And....all of this stuff:
The saddest site though was the once mighty glass showcase where they kept the nice Famicom games. It once boasted pride of place and had some actual good games in it but in the final days was basically tossed aside into a corner, with what meagre fare that remained not deemed valuable enough to even warrant locking the door anymore:
And the remaining merchandise was in the process of being crated up for transport to the Shingu store:
When the place finally closed a few days ago instead of feeling sad I actually felt a bit relieved that it had been put out of its misery. Which is a shame because I really do miss the place. Omocha Souko was the first place that I ever saw a Famicom game at, on my very first visit to the store just a week or so after it opened in 2008. They had a mountain of Famicom carts, thousands of them, in a huge pile at the top of their elevator. It was an amazing thing to see. There was a sign saying 300 yen each next to the pile. I didn`t know what they were at the time having never seen a Famicom before. They were clearly video game cartridges from some 1980s system, but other than that I knew nothing, except that they looked incredible in all their colorful glory and that I wanted them. It was from that moment at the top of that Omocha Souko escalator that I became hooked. A couple of weeks later I bought my first Famicom and the rest is history.

So on that note, this will be my last post about the place. Omocha Souko Fukuoka Honten: I salute you. Thanks for all the memories. And the games.

Fripp the Entertainment Shop: Another Decent Place for Famicom Games

During my recent efforts to broaden my Famicom hunting grounds since the closure of Omocha Souko I stumbled across another decent game store, Flipp (actually spelled `Fillippu` in Japanese) the Entertainment store.

This shop is out in Ohashi (there is a map here for anyone interested). I actually found it by accident while riding my bike in the area. From the outside it looked more like the kind of place that would stock only newer games but I decided to have a look inside in the off chance that they might have a Famicom game or two lying around.

I`m glad that I did as it turned out that they had a pretty decent selection of Famicom and Super Famicom games on a shelf at the back of the store:

They have about 200 to 300 Famicom carts nicely arranged on the shelf.

Each cart has a label with the game name and price on it. Most shops don`t give that much attention to the price tags like that, so I give them points for going the extra mile.

I also like it when games are lined up in rows like this, it makes them quite easy to flip through quickly.

Their selection and prices are pretty good too:

580 yen for Super Mario USA is pretty reasonable, and 100 yen for Super Xevious (the gold cart on the right in the above photo) is a very good deal.

I ended up bringing a basket to the cashier full of Famicom goodies:

The highlights for me were CIB copies of Exed Exes (300 yen) and Sweet Home (980 yen), which were both very good deals for those complete like that even though the boxes were a bit rough. A little trick of the Famicom-collecting-trade that I have learned is that some shops (like this one) charge the same price for a game regardless of whether it is boxed or loose and those places can turn up some CIB treasures from time to time.  Those prices are about average for loose copies of those games, but for CIB copies they were absolute bargains. I particularly like the Exed Exes box with its bold colors - a true Famicom classic.

So if you are in town and looking for another decent place for Famicom games, I give this place a thumbs up. The only downside is that they don`t have much retro hardware and the only non-Famicom/ SFC/ Game Boy games from those generations I found were a couple of loose Mega Drive carts - so if you are looking for PC Engine stuff or any of the rarer early systems (Sega Mark III, etc) they unfortunately don`t have any. Still though, if you are looking for some decent priced Famicom carts its not at all a bad place to visit.

Related Posts:
- Why Japanese Retro Game Shops are so Much Better Than North American Ones- Fukuoka Famicom Shops 1: 007
- Fukuoka Famicom Shops 2: The Decline and Fall of the Famicom Empire
- Fukuoka Famicom Shops 3: Mandarake
- Fukuoka Famicom Shops 4: Flea Markets Brought to you by the God of War
- Fukuoka Famicom Shops 5: Don Quixote and Village Vanguard
- Fukuoka Famicom Shops 6: The New 007 and Hakozaki Flea Market
- Fukuoka Famicom Shops 7: The Other Omocha Souko
- Fukuoka Famicom Shops 8: The Cheapest Famicom Carts in Town
- Fukuoka Famicom Shops 9: Wanpaku TV Game

Manga Souko: A Very Good Famicom Shop

As I mentioned in my previous post I ended up visiting a Famicom shop that I had never been to the other day. That shop lies WAY down south on good old Route 31. To get there just keep heading south. Pedal along until you think you are going to die of exhaustion. If you see an old F5 fighter plane (correction: F-1 fighter plane) on your left you are on the right track, probably only a dozen more kilometres to go:
The shop`s name is Manga Souko. Like my old local shop Omocha Souko it is a chain of stores that sell recycled toys, comics, clothes, movies, CDs and video games.

When I go to video game stores for the first time I always get nervous as I walk in the door. If you don`t know the store and, like me, are only interested in retro video games then the odds are stacked against you finding what you want. The possibilities are:

1) They don`t have any retro games at all;

2) They have retro games but not a very good selection;

3) They have retro games but their prices are too high;

4) They have a good selection of retro games AND their prices are reasonable.

Most of the time you will find the shop falls into category 1, 2 or 3. It is the cross that all retro game collectors in Japan, nay the world, must bear.

Not this time though. I am happy to say that Manga Souko falls decidedly into category 4! I was so delighted!

Take a look at this massive Famicom section they have:

Hundreds of different titles! Most of them quite reasonably priced!

I was like a kid in a candy store. Pure giddiness.

The great thing about visiting a new store with a huge Famicom section like this is that even if, like me, you have hundreds of games they probably will surprise you with a few you have never seen before. With the game shops that are on my normal `rounds` I know their selection pretty well so I rarely find games that I don`t have or know about.

At Manga Souko though I was able to pick up a surprisingly large number of games that I needed, some of which I had never seen before.

Let me show you around the place a little bit.

They have quite a few consoles, though disappointingly no Famicoms (save for the one in the junk box I mentioned in the last post). They had lots of Super Famicoms, a couple Mega drives, Game Cubes and some other more recent consoles nicely packed up though:
Their Super Famicom section was pretty good too:
As was their Game Boy section:
And they had an interesting showcase full of vintage toys that I thought looked quite neat:
They also had a very nice glass case with some of their `good` Famicom and Super Famicom games:
Happily I had enough on me to buy a few games out of that!

This here was one of the store`s more interesting features:
In one part of their Famicom section they have arranged the games according to the `top 100` rankings. This follows the rankings made by Famitsu based on a reader vote a few years ago. I put the whole list at the bottom of this post for reference for anyone interested. Here you can see the top 3, Dragon Quest III, Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3:
Tower of Druaga came in at #56:
And rounding the list off at #100 was Gradius II:
Anyway, to say that I went crazy would be an understatement. This is what I got:
A whole basket full of Famicom carts, what an image of beauty! This was actually me exercising self-restraint, I could easily have filled two of these up with stuff I wanted to buy but the two hour bike ride back home convinced me to limit myself to the one basketload.

I`ll probably do another post to highlight some of the new additions to the collection later.

Since I get a few readers looking for info on local Famicom shops from time to time, anyone who is interested in visiting this particular shop just go here:

View Larger Map

To end this post, I present the top 100 Famicom rankings according to Famitsu (courtesy of Sketz at HardCore Gaming 101 who originally posted it here in a comment a while back):


1) Dragon Quest 3
2) SMB
3) SMB 3
4) FinalFanatasy 3
5) Dragon Quest 4
6) Dragon Quest 2
7) Dragon Quest
8) Legend of Zelda
9) Mother
10) Mario Bros (not SMB)

11) Final Fanatasy
12) Kirby
13) Kunio Kun no Jidaigeki dayo Zenin Shuugou (Kunio in Feudal Japan)
14) Downtown Nekketsu Koushinkyoku Soreyuke Dai Undoukai (Kunio sports)
15) Spartan X (Kung-Fu)
16) SMB2 (lost levels)
17) Nekketsu koukou Dodgeball Club (Kunio Dodgeball)
18) Final Fantasy 2
19) Fire Emblem Ankokuryu to Hikari no Ken
20) Sanma no Meitantei

21) Xevious
22) Ice Climber
23) Spelunker
24) Akumajou Dracula (Castlevania)
25) Gradius
26) Goonies
27) Captain Tsubasa
28) Konami Wai Wai World
29) Metroid

30) Takeshi no choujin (Takeshi "Beat" Kitano game)
31) Final Fantasy 1+2
32) Portpia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken
33) Nekketsu Kouha Kunio Kun (Renegade)
34) Bomberman
35) Ganbare Goemon
36) Wizardry
37) Donkey Kong
38) Hokkaidou Rensa Satsujin Oho-tsuku ni Kiyu
39) Pro Yakkyu Family Stadium (baseball game)

40) Twinbee
41) DR Mario
42) Metal gear
43) Excitebike
44) Fire Emblem Gaiden
45) SMB USA
46) Dai 2 Ji Super Robot Taisen
47) Tetris
48) Rockman 2
49) Kunio Kun Soccer League

50) Rockman
51) Captain Tsubasa 2 Super Striker
52) Ikki
53) Kinnikuman Muscle tag match (M.U.S.C.L.E in the West)
54) Star Soldier
55) Dragon Ball Z
56) Tower of Druaga
57) Dragon ball Z 2 Gekishin Freeze!!
58) SD "Gundam" Gachapon
59) Dragon Ball Z Gaiden Sayajin Zetsumetsu Keikaku

60) Adventure Island
61) Ghosts 'n' Goblins
62) Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari
63) Hatori Kun
64) Metal Slader Glory
65) Lode Runner
66) Waganland
67) Balloon fight
68) Famicom tantei club 2: Ushiru no shoujo kouhen
69) Valkyrie no Bouken Tokinokagi densetsu

70) Momotaro Densetsu
71) Akumajou Densetsu
72) Zelda 2: Adventures of Link
73) Momotarou Dentetsu
74) Contra
75) Meikyu Kumikyoku Milon no daibouken
76) Rockman 5
77) Rockman 3
78) Hanjuku Hero
79) Dragon Ball Z 3

80) Famista 89
81) Famicom tantei club 2: ushiro ni tatsu shoujo zenpen
82) Kaiju monogatari
83) Famicom Wars
84) Family Jockey
85) Rockman 6
86) Dragonball
87) Rockman 4
88) Ganbare Goemon 2
89) SD Gundam Gaiden: Night Gundam Monogatari

90) Legend of Kage
91) Sweet Home (pseudo-prequel to Biohazard)
92) Famicom Jump
93) Yoshi's egg
94) Dragon Ball 3
95) Famicom tantei club kieta koukeisha kouhen
96) Hokuto no Ken (Fist of the North Star)
97) Famicom tantei club kieta koukeisha zenpen
98) Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu
99) Gundam Z Hot Scramble
100) Gradius 2