Double Color TV Game 15 Trouble

In April my wife picked up the 1977 Nintendo Color TV Game 15 for me. I love this sort of simple, early video game stuff. Unfortunately when I plugged it in I discovered that one of the controllers was broken so we haven`t been able to play the thing.

Until two days ago that is. I was back in Omocha Souko and they had just tossed another Color TV Game 15 out for sale. Unfortunately it wasn`t in their 300 yen junk pile, but they only wanted 1,000 yen for it (about 12 bucks). It was missing the battery cover, hadn`t been tested and didn`t come with the AC adaptor but as I only wanted it for one of the controllers I decided what the hell and bought it.

After getting it home I plugged it in using the AC adaptor on my other one and discovered that this one too also had a broken controller. I`m not too sure what the deal is but this can`t have been mere coincidence, they must have had some sort of defect in the controllers.

Fortunately however it did have one working controller so after opening them both up and effecting the old switcheroo, I ended up with one fully functional Color TV Game 15 and one completely useless one.
We gave it a go for the first time last night. It works great. Basically you get 15 games that are pong, but are labelled tennis, volleyball, ice hockey and ping pong. There are different versions of each of these, but every game involves hitting a ball from one side of the screen to the other and that is it. Simplicity perfected. I love it so.

Related Posts:
- Nintendo Color TV Game 15

Fukuoka Famicom Shops VII: The Other Omocha Souko

I often write on here about a store called "Omocha Souko" that I visit and get either ridiculous bargains or completely ripped off at. This may give the impression that there is only one shop by that name, but in fact there are three of them in Fukuoka. The one I go to is the main store and is located right on my way home, hence my constant visits.

The other two are branch stores. One is way out in Meinohama, west of town. I visited it once about a year ago on my way to Ito Shima. Its not bad, but way too far for me to ever visit again.

The other branch is in Shingu, east of town. Closer than the Meinohama one but far enough away that I rarely visit. I happened to be out in the area today, however, so I thought I'd drop by for a look-see.

The Shingu Omocha Souko is a pretty interesting place. It isn't as big as the one I usually go to, but they actually have a bit more interesting stuff. Like the Famicom Robot:
Note the Color TV Game 15. It costs about twice as much as what the other Omocha Souko charged me for one. This is one of the biggest reasons, in addition to distance, that I never visit the Shingu Omocha Souko - most stuff is way overpriced. The Famicom Robot was 10,000 yen, which seems a bit high to me.

They had this amazing thing right next to it though:
This is the Epoch Cassette Vision. I have been looking for one of these forever and today was the first time I have found one in a game shop. It was released in 1981 and as Wikipedia notes "it has the distinction of being the first successful programmable console video game system to be made in Japan." Of course, the Famicom's release a couple years later basically wiped this thing out.

If they had wanted 10,000 yen or so for it I would have been sorely tempted to buy it, but they wanted 20,000, which is way more than I've seen it going for on Yahoo Japan auctions, so I gave it a pass. It was a real beauty though, the box looked great.

They had a few other interesting computer/consoles from the 80s put out by Toshiba and Sony:
Also 20,000 yen each, also way overpriced at that.

They have an impressive collection of Famicom carts, both loose:
And boxed:
Again....all overpriced.

Ironically the one spot in the store where they had their games extremely reasonably priced was in the glass case where they kept the best ones:
They had a copy of Spartan X2 in there for only 1500 yen, which is about half what most shops charge, if they have one. I suspect the reason why the glass case stuff is cheaper is that these have been recently priced, while the stuff on the racks was priced years ago during the peak of the retro-game collecting craze.

In the end, I didn't get Spartan X2, though it was tempting. Maybe next trip.

Instead, I got something else for the same price. It wasn't a Famicom or video game thing, but actually came from their toy section. It is vintage (made in 1982) and, like the Famicom, was a predecessor to a toy that would later be released in North America.

I like it so much I think I'll devote an entire post just to it rather than revealing what it was here:)

Related Posts:
- 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

Nintendo Color TV Game 15

So this is one of those things where everything doesn't quite go to plan.

Omocha Souko has had this Color TV Game 15 for the longest time. Made in the late 1970s by Nintendo, it is one of the oldest of the old-school video game systems. It says it has 15 games built into it, but their method of ENRON-style accounting would never fly in today's gaming world as all the games are variants of Tennis, Hockey or Ping Pong.

If you want to know more about the history of these things I highly recommend Erik's excellent Before Mario blog, which has some really great photos and write-ups about old Nintendo toys, including this one.

Anyway, despite the fact that I've wanted this thing for a long time, I've held off on buying it because they wanted 10,000 yen for it. That is a bit on the high side, which is unusual for Omocha Souko.

They suckered me out this week though. A combination of their various discounts brought the price of the thing down to 6,500 yen. That is boxed and it came with the AC adapter (most don't as the thing didn't originally, it can also run on batteries) so it was a pretty reasonable price.

My wife was looking to get me a present so I said "come on, lets go to Omocha Souko." I'm a lucky guy. She is so sweet.

I brought my camera and intended to photograph the whole purchasing process from its removal from the glass case to the cashier, etc. Like an idiot I forgot. You can see a picture of what it looked like in their glass showcase in a photo I put on this post here last November. It was only when I got home that I remembered to start taking photos. Here it is, fresh out of the bag:
The box is really cool:
My fun came to a bit of a screeching halt though when it came time to actually hook it up to the TV. I had a deja vu experience, remembering hooking up my first Famicom with RF switch to a TV. Long story short: none of the connections match up and you have to use a lot of adapters and things. I had to go through boxes of old cables and crap looking for the right stuff. It turned our living room into a mess:
As you can see from the above photo though, I did eventually get it hooked up.

The story does not quite end happily there though. If you look closely at the pong style game displayed on the TV screen in the above photo, you'll notice that there is only one paddle on the right side of the screen. None on the left. Strange, isn't it?

This puzzled me greatly. For about an hour after getting the thing hooked up, no matter what I did I could not get the paddle on the left (1player) to show up.

I made my way onto the internet and after much surfing to no avail eventually stumbled onto this Youtube video. The guy is just showing the insides of his Color TV Game 15 and while doing so he notes that if you unplug one of the controllers (you have to physically open the casing up to do that) the corresponding paddle disappears.

"Great" I thought. Probably the controller is just unplugged inside the thing and all I have to do is plug it back in and we'll be ready to go.

Nope. I took everything apart. Both controllers were plugged in. I noticed that when I switched them though, the number 1 controller did not work at all. The ingrates at Omocha Souko had sold me a Color TV Game 15 with a broken controller! D-oh!

The normal course of action on making such a discovery would be to return the thing for a refund. BUT I can't do that. As we were making the purchase the staff reminded us (as they always do) that they do not accept refunds for any retro game items. And I explicitly said "yes, that is fine" as I always do.

If I'm buying a 300 yen junk item, I'm willing to take the chance and usually stuff works. Even if it doesn't, I never get upset as its small money. But this thing was expensive. And they had a sign saying "Dousa Kakunin" on it, which means that it had been checked. I think when they checked it they probably just plugged it in to see if it worked for a second (which it does) and didn't notice the missing paddle.

So, you know, caveat emptor and all that. The plus side is that all I need is a working controller. As they come hardwired into the console these things are impossible to find on their own. But if I can find a broken console going for cheap I can cannibalize it for parts to make mine work.
So I can't be too disappointed. I love the thing despite its not working. Just look at it. It looks really really cool, even though it is completely useless.

Related Posts:

- Mega Bargain of the Day: Kousenjuu SP Electro Safari
- The Unveiling (Drumroll): Donkey Kong Hockey!
- Fukuoka Famicom Shops II: The Decline and Fall of the Famicom Empire