Kyorochan Land and Delayed Effects Product Placement

 I bought Kyorochan Land the other day.  Its the first Famicom game I have scratched off my want list in over three years and I'm quite happy with it.

I have been aware of this game for years because it is one of the somewhat rarer and more sought after Famicom titles in Japan.  The lead character is Kyorochan, who is a mascot for Morinaga Corporation's Chocoball snacks.  I had always assumed that this was some sort of limited release product tie-up with Morinaga which explained its rarity, but it turns out it is just a regular Famicom release.  Its status as a high priced game seems to come from the fact that it was simply released late in the Famicom's lifetime (it was released in December 1992, despite the 1991 copyright date on the cart) and thus not many copies were sold.

I kind of like the game's cover art, which looks like the cover of a Chocoball box.  I like it so much in fact that I went down to the conbini and bought a box of them for comparison:

26 years after Morinaga somehow finagled their way into the biggest instance of product placement in Famicom history, their efforts to induce purchases of their snacks continue to pay dividends (84 Yen dividends in this case).

I chose the caramel flavored ones which have  a different color scheme than the Famicom game (which uses the chocolate flavor coloring).  I like caramel.

The box opens on the top:

 The chocoballs themselves are significantly different from what is on the cart, which looks more like chocolate covered almonds.  Chocoballs are...well...balls, not ovals.

The game itself I should mention is a straight up port of the NES game Nebulus with just a few adjustments (like making Kyorochan the main character),  So if you like that game, you'll probably like this one.

This is one of those games that I really regret not having purchased a few years ago as it has gone up in price quite a bit.  I was browsing my old posts and came across this one from 8 years ago (how time flies) which shows a copy of it available at the old Mandarake in Fukuoka for 2900 Yen.  I ended up paying about double that for this copy!  D-oh!

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.

Remeniscing about being a Famicom Newbie

I was looking through some old photos earlier today and I discovered the above shot.  This was taken in November of 2008, more than a year before I started this blog, and is the very first photo ever taken of my Famicom collection.

That was the entirety of my collection about a week after I got the Famicom, about a dozen games.  Its actually a pretty good selection - I still play most of those games (except for Dragon Quest 2, Jarinko Chie and Mach Rider).  Clu Clu Land was the first game I bought, picking it up off the racks at 007 in Fukuoka. 

I have to admit that collecting Famicom games was way more fun then than it is now.  Knowing too much about something can kind of ruin it a bit.  At the start all I knew was that there were more than a thousand games out there and that I had only played about a dozen of them, meaning everything else was new and interesting. 

Now I have about 800 Famicom games in my collection and I know most of them (at least most of the ones that I am interested in playing).  I find that I have to step back from the Famicom every once in a while and just not play it for a month or two.  Then I try to approach it with a fresh slate and pretend that I know nothing about the games.  I actually have more fun that way, it sort of re-creates that feeling of being new to the system again.

I also kind of like this photo because the games and Famicom are laid out on the floor of our old apartment that we moved out of just a couple of months before I started this blog. It was a truly awful apartment but it was also the birthplace of my Famicom collection so it has a certain pride of place in my memory.  I notice that the photos on this blog feature a lot of the flooring of the apartment that I lived in after that (which I lived in for 3 years) and my current apartment, but didn`t have any of that one, so I thought I would remedy that here.

Cheers to you, my old old apartment and to being a Famicom newbie!

My Famicom Collection: A Short Update

Famicom Collection

A few days ago I went from working 7 days a week and going almost 2 months without taking a day off to suddenly finding myself with some free time on my hands.  This allowed me to catch up on some much-needed Famicom collection housekeeping.

I had a little disaster late last year in which my paper checklist that I had been using to keep track of the collection disappeared under mysterious circumstances. I don`t want to alarm anyone but I believe it was stolen by members of a super secret wing of the Swiss Guards under the personal direction of the Pope who ordered its destruction due to the fact that, owing to an amazing coincidence, the series of Famicom carts I owned would, if you used the third letter of each game title in order by date of release, spell out a message that would lead one to a secret stash of evidence in the Vatican`s vaults that proved that Jesus and Mary Magdelaine had sired offspring the linear descendants of which are still alive and currently employed as hair stylists in Tom Cruise`s entourage (though Katie may gain possession of some of them in their divorce settlement).

So anyway, a big thing on my `to do` list ever since has been to re-create my collection checklist so that I could know which games I needed and which I had.  Back when I had 200-300 games this was no problem since I could easily remember which ones I had.  When you get up over the 700 mark though it becomes much harder, especially with the endless supply of sports and Mahjong games with almost the same name that never get played. `Pachi-pro 5?  I think I have Pachi-pro 3 and 4 but 5?` is the type of conversation I am always having with myself at game shops when I spot a game I might need.

Anyway, yesterday I finally had a couple hours to devote to tackling this.  Instead of using another paper checklist I decided to use RF Generation, which allows you to create a database of your own collection.  I recently joined the message boards over there and was given a friendly welcome by their resident Famicom collector, Duke Togo. It is a pretty good site for retro game collectors.   This is my official Famicom collection checklist..

If you have a collection I recommend using RF Generation, it is quite user friendly and easy to make your own database.  According to mine I have 727 different Famicom games.  There are a few that I couldn`t find on their database (this is a constant problem with English checklists, not everyone romanizes the names of Japanese games the same so some of them can be hard to match up on a checklist) so the actual size of my collection is a bit more than that, but its pretty close.  Looks like I have a little more than 300 carts to go to finish!

Manhatten Police and Running Stadium: First Famicom Trade

A couple weeks ago I made my first ever online Famicom purchase.  Continuing that new trend (prompted in large part by the closure of my favorite local Famicom shop) a few days ago I received the above carts - Manhatten Police and Running Stadium - as part of a Famicom cart-for-Famicom cart trade with 80sFreak on Famicom World, who did a lovely job of packing them and shipping them to me quickly.

This is not just my first online trade but my first trade of any kind involving Famicom carts.  When I first started getting doubles in my collection about 3 years ago I always intended to use them for trading purposes, but at the time none of my friends or acquaintances were interested in the Famicom, so they just sat around until I learned to start selling them online.  Now they are finally being put to their intended purpose: helping me fill holes in my collection.

These two are both Family Trainer games, as was my recent online purchase.  I`ve decided that getting all of the Family Trainer games would be a nice intermediate collecting goal so I`ve been actively trying to get all of them (even though as I pointed out in my last post I can`t actually play them at the moment).  My main motivation for doing so is that the subset actually has some very interesting looking games, Manhatten Police in particular being one that has intrigued me for a while.  It also helps that they come in a wide variety of colors which makes the carts themselves look pretty cool.

If my count is correct there are ten games in the Family Trainer series and I think this gives me seven of them, so just three more to go!

United Colors of Famicom

Gotta love those Famicom carts. So colorful.
I`ve never really organized them by color like this before but I thought I`d give it a try to see how they look. I`m rather pleased with the results. The effect reminds me of going into Uniqlo and seeing all their generic T-shirts in primary colors stacked up evenly on the shelves. Very pleasing to the eye.
My only regret is that there aren`t enough pink games to make a stack of them too. The pink carts are really the ones that stand out the best, at least the ones that are really vibrant pink like Super Mario Bros. USA or Banana.

Anyway, as I`ve said before, it is the color of the carts (among other things) that really separates the Famicom from almost every other console out there, except the colorfully-carted Epoch Super Cassette Vision (which is unfortunately massively hard to collect due to its scarcity).

A pile of Super Famicom or Nintendo 64 carts just can`t compete with that!

The Oyama Collection

Behold! The Oyama Famicom Collection!

What is the Oyama Famicom collection? It is Goonies, Super Star Force, Ninja Kun, King Kong 2, Clu Clu Land and Yie Ar Kung Fu.

D-uh.

Oh, wait I see. You mean why are those games together called the Oyama Collection? Because of this:
Well, maybe I should rewind a bit here.

I went to Omocha Souko today and they had just tossed these games into their junk bin with prices of 100-300 yen each on them. I just picked them up, paid for them and didn`t really think much about them until I took them out of their plastic baggies. It was then that I noticed that each of them had the same name - Oyama (大山) - written on the back.
I thought that was quite interesting. I get Famicom carts with kids` names written on them all the time, but this was the first time I had ever gotten a whole group of them from the same kid`s collection.

At this point in the Famicom`s lifespan enough time has passed that most of the childhood collections of kids like this have already been dispersed throughout the secondary market. Some have been sold and resold countless times by now.

Not these ones though. These came directly from the kid (or perhaps a relative of the kid, whose first name is Shinji according to the backs of Yie ar Kung Fu and King Kong 2). Probably somebody was clearing out an old room, maybe getting ready for a move or something, and they just dragged everything they didn`t want to Omocha Souko where they were probably paid 20 yen for the lot and that was that.

Anyway, I think that is something special. Individually these are all fairly common games that you can find pretty cheap at most retro game shops, but taken together the group is more than the sum of its individual parts. I think I will try to keep the Oyama collection intact rather than breaking it up. In fact, I feel almost duty-bound to do so.

Cheers to you, Shinji Oyama. Your Famicom collection will be maintained for the ages....

The Famicom Game Collection at the New Year

Another year is at an end. I thought this might be a good time to do a little review of the state of my Famicom game collection.

At the moment I have a little over 700 different Famicom carts, roughly 2/3 of the total. I say `roughly` because unfortunately I lost my checklist a few months ago and since then have had to basically guess which ones I need when making purchases. At some point I`ll have to create a new one.

Anyway, that means that my progress was pretty slow this year as I already had over 600 different carts at the end of 2010. That is to be expected though, the more carts you have the harder it gets to find the ones that you still need.

My Famicom collection at the moment is scattered throughout my apartment in a variety of nooks and crannies. Basically anywhere I could put them. My favorite games I keep on my little custom built Famicom cart shelf, which is still decorated for Christmas:
Other games that I like but which didn`t quite make the cut for the shelf go in this box:
Or in this little side table:
Or here in this little space on the other side of the sofa:
Or just in front of the TV:
I also have a big pile on a shelf in the spare room. I used to store the entire collection there but since we got the dog I`ve only been able to use a little corner of it, right next to the Slave 1 there:
These are games that I basically don`t play anymore. There are a few good ones in there, but its way too much of a pain to find them. I keep the colorful ones facing out as I think it makes the room look a little brighter.

Rounding out the collection is this box, where I keep the overflow from the overflow from the overflow:
Oh and of course my ever expanding Complete in Box Famicom collection, which is getting quite big. I really wish I had a way to display these, that is another thing that will have to await our moving into a bigger place someday:
In addition to all of that I have my doubles. I`ve actually sold quite a few of them over the past few months, but the pile is still impressive:
And that is about it for my Famicom collection!

This will in all likelihood be my last post here for 2011. I hope you all have a nice New Year!

Related Posts:
- Boxed Famicom Games and the Problem of Collection Creep
- First Famicom Carts of 2011
- Wall of Famicom
- Famicom Fort

Boxed Famicom Games and the Problem of Collection Creep

When I first set out on my mission to collect all of the carts ever released for the Famicom (1055 in total, of which I have just short of 700), I intended to only collect them loose.

Over the years though I have accumulated a fair number of boxed Famicom games. A little over fifty of them.
The first I got was Gradius, which remains one of my favorites. I bought it mainly because I needed Gradius and happened to find a boxed one going cheap, so I figured `why not`?
This process has repeated itself about fifty or so times with each of the boxed games I have acquired. Unlike the loose carts that I need, I don`t specifically go looking for boxed games. But when I see a nice one that looks good and the price is right I usually pick it up.
This presents a bit of an existential problem to my collecting mind. What, exactly, is it that I am collecting? With my loose carts the question is pretty easy to answer - I am collecting all of them. By definition, therefore, any loose cart that I don`t have is one I need. Its a very simple equation.
With boxed games though that simplicity and clarity of purpose vanishes. Collecting all of the boxed has never been a serious option - I have nowhere near enough money to do so. The ones I do possess provide no evidence of any method to the madness with which I have collected them. They are a random selection of impulse purchases made at various times and selected based on an amorphous amalgum of subjective criteria that I could not put into words if asked to do so.

In other words, they are just a random bunch of games that I liked the look of.
This is an example what I like to call `collection creep` and it happens with pretty much every collection I have ever started in my life. You start out collecting one thing with a specific goal of just collecting that one thing. But as you go about doing so, you start to find other, similar, things from time to time and you end up buying them as well. Slowly the amount of these `other things` which you possess start to dominate your collection, making a mockery of your original goal. The boundaries of what you collect creeps outward until it becomes absolutely massive.
The process with my current collection has gone something like the following, arranged in order with the first being my original collecting goal and the last being my current collecting goal:

1. Collect only loose Famicom carts of games I like.

2. Collect loose Famicom carts of all the games released for the Famicom.

3. Collect all the Famicom games loose and also a few boxed Famicom games.

4. Collect all the Famicom games loose, a few boxed Famicom games, and a few Super Famicom games I like.

5. Collect all the Famicom games loose, a few boxed Famicom games, a few Super Famicom games and some PC Engine games.

(a few intermediate steps ommited)

38. Collect all retro video games ever made.

Well, my current goal isn`t really to collect every retro video game ever made, but it now seems that pretty much any retro video game out there which I don`t have and which looks cool is fair game.

The end result is that I now have more retro consoles than I can count and a massive horde of games. This month alone I have added two more consoles (the Virtua Boy and Sega SG-1000-II) to the collection! It never ends. If I lived in a larger house this wouldn`t really be a problem, but being in a Japanese apartment with limited storage space - well, I won`t bore you with my tales of closet woe.

Anyway, any of you out there looking to start a collection - beware the perils of collection creep!

Video Game Collecting: Boxed or Loose?

As someone who would refer to himself as a "video game collector", one question that has often plagued me when making a purchasing decision is whether or not I want a game boxed or loose.

I count myself as fortunate that these are the types of things that cause me worry.

When I started out trying to collect the whole Famicom set, I was only interested in getting the loose carts. The boxes and manuals didn't interest me much. I was mesmerized by the colorful carts and didn't really give those extras much thought.
Over time though I've come to appreciate the boxes. A lot of them are just as colorful as the carts and exude that retro 80s vibe in ways that the carts alone are incapable of.
I've got about 30 or so boxed Famicom games. I think they look quite nice on my shelf. For financial reasons I'm still focusing on trying to get all the Famicom carts loose, but the boxes have won me over to the point where I am willing to shell out a bit of cash on the odd nice one every now and again.

For the most part I am only interested in the cardboard boxes though. The plastic ones just don't interest me. Some people praise them for being sturdier, but that doesn't impress me. They lack the charm of cardboard.

Wait, did I just praise the charm of cardboard? Oh the eccentricities of this wonderful hobby....

Anyway, part of this is timing - plastic cases started turning up relatively late in the Famicom's career so most of my favorite classic games come in cardboard. Namco's lineup illustrates this point well. All their numbered carts (Galaxian, Pac Man, Xevious, Burger Time, etc) came in tiny cardboard boxes, but their later games (Family Circuit, Family Stadium, etc) came in plastic boxes. The former look about a million times better than the latter.
An oft-overlooked element that adds interest to Famicom collecting in particular is that it is the only Nintendo console where games came in a variety of box sizes and materials. Super Famicom and Nintendo 64 games all came in boxes made of cardboard (a plus) and of the same size and dimensions (a minus). Ditto with the GameCube and Wii, only they used plastic instead of cardboard. I'm sure there are the odd special edition game or something that bucked this trend, but by and large all boxes on subsequent consoles strictly conformed to a single standard.

I also have a small collection of Famicom Disk System boxed games. I'm not sure if these are boxed, actually. They come with their mini-cases anyway:I find these kind of cute too. They are like CD cases only half the size.

Anyway, just some musings on the boxed vs. loose question.

Related Posts:
-Crazy Climber and the Perils of Collecting Loose Famicom Carts
-Famicom Cart Condition: Why Good is Bad and I'll Never Buy Sealed Stuff-Wall of Famicom

More Video Game Shopping Porn! Another Boatload of Famicom Carts!

Well, my indignant boycott of Omocha Souko for selling me a broken console lasted for all of three days. They just know me to well. Cheap Famicom carts are my Kryptonite.

And today did they ever have some cheap Famicom carts.

They had put out another pile of carts for 100 yen (about1$US) each. I ended up buying 19 of them.

First, I got these eight here. All of them are carts that I needed and with these acquisitions my collection has moved past the 650 mark, almost 2/3 of the way to the entire set.
Solomon no Kagi (Solomon's Key) was probably the best one in this lot. I've been looking for a cheap copy of it for a while, this is the first time I've seen one for less than 2,000 yen. I haven't played it yet so I don't know if its any good, but what a deal. I was really psyched to get a copy of Family Basic V3 too.

Next, the Ice Climbers. These were probably the best deal. Two copies of Ice Climber, one complete with box and manual, for 100 yen each:
The box is a bit beat up and the carts are a little scuffed, but what a deal. I love the Ice Climber box art, it is probably my favorite cover art from that series of early Nintendo carts with the gray boxes. Something about the maniacal expression on the face of the pink guy amuses me.

I also got a "boxed" copy of Wrecking Crew:
I found this to be interesting. The box and manual aren't original, they were made by a shop called "Famicom House" which used to make its own manuals and boxes for used Famicom games it sold. I think they are kind of neat.

Famicom House, incidentally, still exists and is still called "Famicom House", but it is a grossly misleading name. They have a location near my place, but they only sell games for new systems these days. So if you are looking for Famicom games, Famicom House does not have them so don't bother. They also seem to have diversified heavily into the pornography market, as about 2/3 or so of the floor space is curtained off and devoted to adults only stuff.

Back in the day, though, they were probably a pretty good place to buy Famicom games. Judging by this copy of Wrecking Crew, anyway.

Rounding out my purchase were the eight games featured in the photo at the top of this post. I already have those games, but figured they would make for good trading material someday!

Related Posts:

- Mega Bargain of the Day: 3 Consoles and a Game for 10 Bucks
- First Famicom Carts of 2011
- Mega Bargain of the Day: Family Basic, Family Trainer and Climber Stick
- Retro Game Shopping Will Never be the Same Again

First Famicom Carts of 2011

Here it is, March already and until today I hadn't bought a single Famicom game all year. The last game I got was "Thunderbirds" which my wife gave me for Christmas. Since then, not a one!

Part of this has been the effect of having over 600 different carts already. When you've got that many, it gets very hard to find ones that you don't already have. I've picked over all the local shops and pretty much have all the games that they have.

Another reason though has been the fact that my local shops just haven't been getting much new in these days, at least as far as Famicom carts go.

Today though I was quite pleased to find a crate-full of newly arrived Famicom carts freshly displayed at Omocha Souko for me to go through!

On going through them, I was even more pleased to discover that they had some carts which I needed! Yay!

I ended up picking up 10 0f them, pictured above. Among the new haul were such luminaries as Mitsume Ga Tooru:
Gun-Dec:
Magical Doropie:
And Battletoads:
One of the more interesting ones I found was a game I already had, Lode Runner:
The cart on the left is the original Famicom version of Lode Runner, released in 1984. This is a relatively easy one to find. The one on the right though is the 1991 version with artwork on the cover. That is a much harder version to find and I decided to get it just for the hell of it. I kind of like having the pair of them!

Anyway, with these new acquisitions I now have a grand total of 647 different Famicom games, 9 more than I had at New Year (the new Lode Runner doesn't count).

Incidentally this is how I keep track of my collection:
I printed out the list of Famicom games on Wikipedia back when I started this whole "collect the whole Famicom set" venture and I've just been checking them off as I go.

I'm so "analogue".

Edited to note:

I forgot to mention the best part! The price! These games were all just 100 yen (1$ US) each! Bargain!