Horrible Things are Happening in Nagoya's Osu

 I made a pilgrimage out to the Osu neighborhood in Nagoya, which I've highlighted on this blog before.  It is Nagoya's version of Akihabara in Tokyo or Den Den Town in Osaka - full of electronics, toys, cosplay, manga and other shops including of course retro games.

 I fell in love with the place on my first visit almost 7 years ago, but yesterday I fell out of love with it.  Terrible things are happening there.  The worst of them here:

 Mandarake!  This used to be the best place in Osu to buy retro games.  It never quite matched the shops I visited in my Fukuoka days (during the golden age of cheap Japanese retro game hunting that lasted until about 2012), but I picked up quite a few things there over the years.  They had a cool basket of Famicom carts:

 And back in 2014 this is what their glass showcase had -  loose copies of Gimmick for 12,000 Yen (about 120$) each!  I wish I had bought those!  And in the back you can see the hyper rare Bridgestone and Yasuda Seimei carts.

 They also had beautiful CIB stuff!

Basically until Super Potato opened up 5 years ago, Mandarake was the best place to look for rare and valuable Famicom games in Nagoya (the centre of the Chubu metropolitain area with about 9 million people, this is a big city).

So imagine my dissapointment when I visited yesterday and discovered - Mandarake was still there but their retro games weren't!  They had completely removed their retro game section!  All the Famicom carts from the best store in town gone!  They had expanded their manga section to take over the space formally taken up by retro games (the showcases in the above photos now have vintage comics in them) and they now only stock current generation video games.

This is a huge blow to the Famicom collecting community and I'm not sure if this is limited to the Nagoya Mandarake or if they have stopped stocking retro games at their other locations (if any readers know, please comment!)  I especially fear for my beloved Mandarake in Fukuoka, which I still visit once a year or so when I'm down there and have such fond memories of!

So I had walked into that Mandarake yesterday with a wad of cash that I hoped to spend on some Famicom games for my collection, and devastated by what I discovered I walked out the door, rounded the corner and went straight into the loving arms of Nagoya's Super Potato which is almost next door.  Fortunately they still have retro games (it is basically what they exist for after all) but I was very disappointed by what I found there too.

A Famicom collector never goes into a Super Potato expecting to find bargains, prices there have always been on the high side for Japan.  But you go there for the amazing stuff that you can only find in Super Potato - the hyper rarities and other stuff.  Their showcases are almost like museums.

Or at least they used to be.  I was shocked by how picked over their high end stuff was.  I had noted this in a post I did after a visit a year ago, but its gotten worse since then with a lot of the higher end stuff I noted in that post having sold and not been replaced by anything of similar stature.  Where Super Potato showcases once had stuff like Gold Binary Lands (200 known copies in existence) or Rockman 4s (8 copies), they are now full of a lot more mid-level stuff like CIB copies of Contra or Rockman which, while great, aren't particularly rare or exciting to see.  They didn't even have any copies of Gimmick! or Punch Out Gold.

This is kind of weird.  On the one hand, rare video games are flying off the shelf at Super Potato so fast they can't re-stock them.  On the other, for some reason Mandarake (which had way better prices on retro games) has thrown in the towel on them.  The end result though is that Osu just isn't anywhere near as good a place to hunt for retro games as it was even as recently as a year ago.  Which is really disappointing!

So if you are thinking of coming to Nagoya for some retro game hunting, be forewarned that the pickings continue to get worse and worse!

The Most Expensive Famicom Games at Super Potato

I made a trek out to Super Potato in Nagoya the other day.  I love Super Potato even though I don't buy a lot there, its just such a beautiful shop to stroll around in and gawk at the amazing stuff they have.  If I ever opened a game shop, I don't think I would do anything differently from what Super Potato has done with theirs.

I brought my camera along and in addition to the obligatory pictures of rows of Famicom games on shelves:

And stacks of Famicom consoles:

I also took some pictures of the glass case in which they store their most valuable Famicom games and thought I'd share with you the most valuable stuff they have.

The CIB stuff is, predictably, the most expensive.  Some of the highlights here include:

Battle Formula: 128,000 Yen
Over Horizon: 49,800 Yen
Gimmick!: 69,800 Yen
Adventure Island IV: 49,800 Yen
Metal Storm: 29,800 Yen

Also visible in the foreground is an oddity - the Gradius Archimendes version, which was limited to 4000 copies given out to consumers of ramen back in the day.  They want 59,800 Yen for it, which is in the ballpark, but its odd because the box is a regular Gradius box.  The Archimendes version has a distinctive label across the upper right corner which is missing on that one (otherwise it would be much more expensive).

Right next to them is the most expensive thing in the store, though I think it is a pricing error.  A CIB copy of Recca Summer Carnival 92 for 778,000 Yen (that is about $7,000 US).  That is definitely a valuable and rare game, but CIB copies usually go for about 100,000 Yen on Yahoo Auctions (and in fact there is one there now at that price).  Super Potato's price tend towards the high side, but not THAT much, so I think this must be a mistake and maybe somebody accidentally added an extra zero to the price tag.  

More goodies here, including Moon Crystal (64,800 Yen):

Battletoads (21,800 Yen) and some Rockmans with prices falling into reach of mere mortals:

A few more beauties in the 10,000-20,000 Yen or so range:

The cart only selection is also pretty impressive. Tailor Made by Bridgestone (49,800 Yen, the one with the cyclists on it) is one of the holy grails of Famicom collecting.  It was distributed only to bicycle shops and allowed customers to choose custom parts for their bicycles, thus making it one of the rarest games out there (though also one of the boringest).  Recca Summer Carnival 92 is available for the same price and is a lot more well known, though it seems to be a lot easier to find.

One of the more surprising things I noticed was actually that, impressive as this selection is, its nowhere near as awe-inspiring as it once was.  A few years ago a trip to Super Potato would inevitably turn up some hyper rarities - like my visit to the Osaka branch a few years ago where I found copies of the gold Rockman 4 (only 8 ever made) and the gold Binary Land (only about 200).  The hyper-rarities like those ones seem to have disappeared from the market as they never turn up on Yahoo Auctions anymore either.  Games like Tailor Made and Recca are certainly impressive, but they don't really feel up to the task of headlining a Super Potato glass case.

Famicom Shopping News: Super Potato Just Opened a Shop in Nagoya

Super Potato is almost without a doubt the most famous of all Japanese retro game stores.  I`ve never visited the Akihabara one, but I have taken in the one in Osaka and it blew me away.

So I am glad to be the first person in the blog-iverse to do a write up about the newest Super Potato, which just opened its doors in Nagoya this week!

As I mentioned before, Nagoya has a toy/game/cosplay/otaku neighborhood called Osu, which is a bit like Akihabara or Osaka`s Den Den Town.  The new Super Potato is located right in the middle of that on Akamon Street, almost next door to the Mandarake, which will make it very convenient for retro game collectors visiting Nagoya to visit the two biggest shops. 

The shop is comparable in size to the Osaka Super Potato, I`ve never been to the one in Akihabara so I don`t know if it rivals that one or not.  Its pretty decent sized though, taking up two floors in a cute little building.

The first thing that is likely to attract your attention from the sidewalk is a giant Game Boy in the window which is....so cool....

 Similar to the one in Osaka, when you go through the entrance you are greeted mainly by snacks and plush toys rather than games.

 Proceed further inside though and a Famicom box is hooked up to a TV so you can give Duck Hunt a go!

 Beyond that, row and row of beautiful Famicom games

And no write-up about a Super Potato would be complete without a picture of the stacks of Famicom consoles.

 With some N64s, Super Famicoms, Twin Famicoms and Disk Systems for company:

Behind the Famicom games they also had a pretty huge selection of Super Famicom games.

They had some pretty amazing stuff in the glass cases.  This beautiful CIB Epoch Super Cassette Vision caught my eye, I`ve wanted one of these for a while.

They had some cool rare Famicom games too, like this green copy of Kinnikuman, which they wanted 35,000 yen for

 And a whole bunch of other good stuff:

 Probably the coolest thing in the place were these copies of Rockman 1-6.  Note that this isn`t just a complete set (cool enough in its own right), it is a set in which every one of them is signed by Keiji Inafune, the man who designed Rockman!!  They didn`t have a price on it, I can`t even begin to imagine what something like that would be worth.

 The second floor had a lot of stuff for Sega and Sony consoles.  Mostly stuff I`m not interested in except for their awesome Sega Mark III selection.

 Next to the stairs they had a massive pile of dead stock Super Famicom games going cheaply

 I suppose I should mention the prices at this point.  In a word: high.  Not quite Toronto high, but pretty damn high.  They had a loose Twin Famicom for 17,000 yen, which is probably even on the high end by Ebay standards.  Some of the games were reasonably priced but a lot of them were quite expensive - Mandarake which is just around the corner generally has better prices (though nowhere near the selection unfortunately). 

Despite the lack of dirt cheap bargains this is definitely a must-visit.  The thing I really like about Super Potato is how well they display their games - they just look way more beautiful and enticing in there than they do anywhere else.  A visit to a Super Potato is as close a thing to a religious pilgramage that retro gaming has to offer.  It is a place that inspires. And now there is one more place to do it!