Puck Man Says: I am so Pucking Awesome.

Went to Mandarake two days ago. Looked in their glass case. Saw the above. Price was reasonable.

So, you know, I was all like:
Puck Man! Woo yeah!

This is one of those little bits of gaming history I have been looking to snag for the longest time. As every retro game collector with a penchant for useless trivia (ie every retro game collector) knows, Puck Man was the original name given to Pac Man.

When they discovered the ease with which the `P` in Puck could be turned into an `F` by 1980s kids with their devilish (dare I say?) senses of humor, they hastily changed the name to Pac Man.

So I don`t think it was ever known as Puck Man in North America, but for a short time that was the name of the game in Japan.

It is very hard to find physical remnants of this little quirk in the history of Pac Man, in fact my new Tomy handheld is the first time I have seen anything with Puck Man on it. By the time the game was released on the Famicom here it had already adopted the new name so I don`t think there are any other home game releases with the Puck Man title.
It was pretty cheap owing to the fact that it did not come with the box (which would have been a nice touch but I`m not complaining). I ran straight from Mandarake to the 100 yen shop to pick up some batteries and was really pleased to find that it works perfectly.

For an early 1980s handheld it is a pretty good game. You have two settings, amateur and pro. I`ve only tried amateur. Basically it is Pac Man only the screen isn`t the same as in the arcade or console versions and you don`t have the same range of movements. The sound effects are awesome though, it plays the Pac Man tune when you turn it on. Music to my ears. Literally.
Controls are pretty simple.

I love everything about this actually. The design is perfect. It actually looks a bit like Pac Man...er I mean Puck Man. It also looks somewhat like a microwaveable container with buttons. But, you know, in a good way.

A very nice addition to my growing handheld collection:)

Them Hard Off Label Peeling Blues. I got `em. Got `em real bad.

Famicomblog is...almost back! One more week and I should be back to normal! In the meantime I thought I`d take an hour here to do an homage post to the Hard Off price tag blues which, as the title suggests, I got.

It seems every hobby has its common annoyance that enthusiasts enjoy complaining about. For Famicom collectors resident in Japan far and away the biggest of these has to be the Hard Off price tags. You can find some really great deals in those shops, but when you get your stuff home you always have to deal with the Hard Off price tag blues. They use the most ridiculously adhesive price tags in the world.  They are a massive pain in the ass to get off. And they always put them directly on the cart!! Heaven forbid that you should find some good CIB stuff at one of those shops because it will have one of these price tags directly on the box and it WILL remove part of the surface of the box when you take it off.

Let me show you what I`m talking about. Take this copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 for the Mega Drive I got at one a while back at a Hard Off here in town:
105 yen is a good deal, but that price tag? Here is how it goes. Step 1: Start at one of the corners:
That gets about 10% of it off:
Step 2: Have a go at the opposite corner:
Now you`ve got kind of a V shape going there:
And Repeat:
And Repeat:
Until you have a cart that is mostly clean:
And a pile of sticky little price tag remnants to dispose of:
2 hours well spent.

Exed Exes on Waikiki Beach

I was in Hawaii for a few days earlier this week. Unfortunately it was not a pleasure trip, but rather for business so I didn`t have much time to myself. I did manage to sneak in a few hours on Waikiki beach though.

Before leaving Japan I thought it would be nice to bring one of my Famicom carts along for the trip. I wandered over to my Famicom cart shelf and for some reason Exed Exes just looked like the right cart to bring. Must be the yellow - reminds me of pineapples.

Anyway, if any of you were wondering what a used Famicom cart would look like on Waikiki Beach, you now have your answer!

Also, just as a matter of blog-related news, I should be getting back into regular posting in a couple of weeks. The end of my insanely busy time is coming into view...

Please Stay Tuned, Regularly Scheduled Famicomblog Content Will Resume Shortly

Please stay tuned, Famicomblog will resume shortly.

My blogging content has unfortunately fallen off to zero this month due to the perfect storm of being busy that has suddenly hit. I somewhat overextended myself and am now sadly working 7 days a week, a pace that will likely continue until well into next month. This has forced me to prioritize a few things and unfortunately this blog has fallen victim to that process.

So please accept my apologies for the fact that Famicomblog will be experiencing a brief bit of down time for the next month or so.

The good news is that this will only be temporary as once I have the mountain of work cleared off my desk I expect to have a relatively relaxed period after that, so the blog will return to normal quite quickly!

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?

Star Wars Power Droid Wanders Aimlessly Around Town

Da dee dooo dee dum

Not really Famicom Related but what the hell.  I love my Star Wars Power Droid Action Figure so.   These photos work best if you imagine he is singing as he moseys around like this.

Watch out....you might get what your after....cool babies....strange but not a stranger.....I....AM...AN....OR-DI-NA-RY GUY...Burning down the house

And I think its gonna be a long long time til touchdown brings me round again to find I`m not the man they think I am at home oh no no no I`m a rocket man...ROCKET MAN--- burning out his fuse up here alone....

  

Oh the Camptown Ladies Sing this Song Doo Dar, Doo Dar.....

Never gonna give you up, Never gonna let you down, never gonna run around or desert you....Never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie or hurt you.....

I got something to tell you....I got something to say....I`m gonna put this dream in motion...Never let something stand in my way....When the going gets tough....the tough get going.  Woooh

Shiny Happy People laughing.....meet me in the crowd people...people....throw your love around....love me....love me....

With a load of iron ore 26000 tons more than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty...That big ship `n true was a bone to be chewed when the gales of November came early.....

If you`re blue and you don`t know where to go to why don`t you go where fashion sits.....puttin` on the ritz.....

I meet her in a club down in old Soho where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Cherry Cola....C-O-L-A Cola.....

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.