They want HOW MUCH for Metal Gear?

Every once in a while I like to see what Famicom stuff is going for on Ebay. Because my Ebay searches automatically filter the results with the highest priced stuff at the top I get to see what the most expensive Famicom thing on Ebay is at any given moment.

At the moment it is this, the above CIB copy of Metal Gear for the Famicom. The price? But it Now for $19,999.95.

To put that in perspective, Mandarake in Tokyo put an entire set of Famicom carts - all 1051 of them - on sale for about $7000 three years ago. So in other words you could either buy EVERY Famicom game ever made almost 3 times over or you could buy just Metal Gear.

The reason it is so expensive is because, according to the listing, it is:

¨85+ Qualified NM+ Gold from the Video Game Authority¨

I know, I think so too. This is my copy of the exact same game:

I paid about $15 for it. Admittedly that is a bit cheaper than average but still, if you walk into Mandarake you could easily walk out with a decent looking CIB copy of Metal Gear for $40 tops. Just the shipping on this one alone (to Japan at least) is more than three times that (no kidding, $143.92 according to the shipping calculator).

As a collector I understand why condition is important. What I don`t understand is why anyone would pay THAT much of a premium for such a common game just because it is in near mint condition. I could sort of see some rich guy shelling out that much for one of those hyper rare Atari 2600 games that there are only like 14 copies of in the world, but for Metal Gear on the Famicom?

Since the grossly inflated price for this game is obviously 100% driven by obsession with condition, this raises a question for me: as a collector, what condition does it make sense to collect games in?

Personally I like to have reasonable looking copies of stuff but not mint stuff. Mint stuff sucks. You have to pay more for it AND you can`t enjoy it because once you have it all you are allowed to do with it is worry about keeping it in mint condition.

I generally prefer stuff that is in mid-range condition. Used but not abused.Like my copy of Metal Gear up there. I have no functional need for the box but I kind of wanted it anyway because it looks kind of cool. The one I have is a little beat up - its got rounded corners and a couple of dings here and there. But nothing so bad that it ruins the box`s visual appeal. The picture is still clear and it isn`t missing anything so I`m happy. Why in god`s name would I, or anyone even remotely sane, want to spend an extra $19,985 for the exact same thing just without the dings? I mean, I understand that in a collector:s market mint stuff should be worth more, but that much more? Really?

Same with carts. I actually kind of like carts that are in destroyed condition but for my `official collection` I just basically want ones with a decent looking front label and no major damage. Other than that I don`t care: scuff marks, kids names written on the backs, scratches - its all good.

On the Famicom Hunt in Kitakyushu

Kitakyushu`s Mandarake is in there

Yesterday I had a few hours and decided to do something I have never done before: make a trip to another city specifically to check out their Famicom related shops.

This was partly inspired by a sign I saw recently at Mandarake advertising the opening of their new shop in Kitakyushu, which is just an hour away by train.  So yesterday morning I headed off to the nearest JR station and got on board a train headed to Kokura, which is the main station in Kitakyushu.

The ride was kind of nice, I don`t take the train too often in Kyushu but when I lived in the Kansai area back in the late 90s/early 00s I used to take it all the time.  Made me a little nostialigic for those days.  Especially when I got off the train at Kokura at around noon and was greeted with such a stereotypical Japanese train station image: a throng of salary men eating noodles at a platform kiosk.

Salary men in Kysuhu love that Udon

The new Mandarake is located just north of Kokura station in a building called Aru Aru City (a picture of the building is at the top of this post).  If you are big into nerd stuff this building might be worth the trip alone, it is 7 floors of nothing but Otaku stuff.  The top couple of floors are a manga museum.

Personally I have absolutely zero interest in anime, manga, cosplay and all of that other stuff.  I wandered around a bit but just didn`t have any interest in anything.  I like vintage video games and some vintage toys but that is about it, so after a few minutes I decided to just head straight to Mandarake on the fourth floor:

Unfortunately the Kokura Mandarake, like the Fukuoka Mandarake, has a strict no-photos-in-the-store policy with signs to that effect everywhere, so the above photo taken at the entrance is all I got.

It is a pretty decent store though.  It is smaller than the Fukuoka Mandarake, but not too much smaller.  This was what I expected since Kitakyushu itself is a bit smaller than Fukuoka, but not too much smaller.

They had a pretty decent selection of retro games in there, so if you are in Kitakyushu it is definitely worth taking a look.  I would have loved to have been able to take some photos, I have no idea why they don`t allow it, I mean it is effectively free advertising for them if bloggers like me put photos of their stuff up.  Anyway.

I picked up a few things there, not too much but I found a few neat odds and ends that I will devote some future posts too. 

After finishing with Mandarake I headed to the south side of Kokura station.  Before the trip I had done some research using google maps to try to find a few other shops that, like Mandarake, might have some decent Famicom or other retro gaming stuff.  I did this mainly by typing in key words like `Famicom` or `game shop` in Japanese while the map was centred on Kokura.  I was able to find only two places in the station area that seemed promising.

The first was this Book Off:

It is about a ten minute walk south of the station.  I had actually already visited this Book Off in 2008 shortly after I arrived in Japan and the wife and I had a few hours to kill in Kokura for some reason.  This is actually the shop where I bought my very fist Famicom.  I remember it clearly, it was such a bargain at only 1250 yen with all the cables and stuff that I just had to get it.  Good times.

For retro game collectors, as I have said before, Book Offs are very hit and miss.  In my experience about 70-80% of them don`t have any retro games at all and of the few that do they usually have a poor selection or high prices.

This one, however, still has a decent if small selection and quite reasonable prices:

  

 I ended up dropping about 5000 yen there, mainly on CIB games that I already owned loose but kind of wanted CIB copies of.  The prices were pretty decent, about 20-50% less on average than what Mandarake here in Fukuoka wanted for the ones I got so I thought I might as well splurge!

After Book Off I had one more shop that seemed the most tantalizing and promising just based on its name: Famicom World!!  I did a little research on this one and found a little information here which indicated that they did stock retro games.  They also had this awesome looking photo of the store front, which really got me excited:

 

 I had a map on hand with the exact location and address marked down.  It was a bit of a hike to get there through some not-very-attractive cityscape, but after about 20 minutes I arrived at the spot where it should have been.

Only trouble was I couldn`t find any store named Famicom World.  I walked up and down the block a couple of times trying to figure it out (Japanese addresses are nowhere near as simple as Western ones so it isn`t just a case of looking for the number on the building).

Then my eyes struck upon this:

 NOOOO!!!  If you look closely you can see the outline in katakana of the words `Famicom` and `World` up there, along with the winged-globe mascot visible in the above photo.  In keeping with the trend of retro game shops going out of business that I noted on here only a few days ago, Famicom World is no more!

So that was a big disappointment and brought my Famicom hunt to an abrupt end.  I`m sure there are a lot of other Famicom shops in Kitakyushu, in fact I know there is a Manga Souko location somewhere in the suburbs up there, but since I was forced by time constraints to stay near the station I unfortunately couldn`t check them out. 

Happily though I did have my hauls from Mandarake and Book Off to console me on the train ride home, so it was a pretty decent day despite the anti-climax of Famicom World!

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!

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.

Kung Fu Fighting!!

Kung who?  Kung FU!

Despite being insanely busy over the past two months I was nonetheless able to make a few acquisitions to my precious Famicom collection that I would now like to post in a boastful manner about.

About a month ago I was able to wheel and deal with the always excellent fredj on Famicom World for the above copy of Kung Fu!

I have been wanting a copy of that one for a long time but it is pretty crazy expensive here.  They have a minty CIB copy of it at Mandarake in town here for 63,000 yen (about $750 US), which is way out of my price range.  This was a slightly beat up cart only copy which allowed it to fall within my trading budget.

As you can note from the above photo, Kung Fu is very similar to Spartan X.  That is because it is Spartan X, just with a different name.   There is a bit of a history as to why this game was released with two names.  Here is the story as I have been able to gather from my surfing of the Japanese Famicom related internet.

Spartan X is the Japanese name of the Jackie Chan movie Wheels on Meals, which was a big hit here in 1984:

The game was released in conjunction with the film and thus had the same name.  This, I should note, came as news to me.  I had always assumed Spartan X/ Kung Fu was based on Bruce Lee`s Game of Death because....well because it IS Game of Death.  You use kung fu to fight an army of villains from floor to floor up a Chinese looking building to the boss at the top.  Exact same thing.

Anyway, whatever.  It is based on Wheels on Meals and not Game of Death.  No big whoop.

Nobody out there seems exactly sure about this, but it is the considered opinion of Japanese bloggers that Nintendo only had a license to use the film`s name for a limited time.  When it expired they switched the name of the game from Spartan X to Kung Fu, the same name the NES release was given.

I`m speculating here, but since this name change probably came late in the release`s lifespan they must have only sold a handful of copies with the Kung Fu name, hence the present rarity of that version.  Except for the title screen it is basically the same game.

In preparation to write this post I actually tracked down a copy of the movie Spartan X to see what it was like. It is kind of.....strange.  Jackie Chan plays Thomas who, along with Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, are pitted against a bunch of bad guys who also know Kung Fu.  Sylvia in the film isn`t actually Thomas`s girlfriend.  Thomas and all of the `good guys` in the film seem to be bizarrely chaste virgins who have no obvious motivation to want to help Sylvia, a prostitute/ theif who stole all their money and doesn`t seem to have any sexual interest in any of them.

If you avoid trying to make any sense of the plot or characters though it does stand out as one of those so bad it is good movies. Lots of 80s style kung fu kicking and that sort of stuff.  Sylvia does get kidnapped and Thomas and friends do actually have to fight their way through an army of kung fu bad guys to rescue her at the end so there is some similarity with the game, though all this takes place in Spain for some reason.  There is a lot of humor throughout, some translates well, a lot does not.  Still worth a viewing though!

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.