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!
This was an excellent post! With me, I'm not too concerned about collecting every Famicom game ever, and really only those that interest me. Maybe it's because of that I can still get more than the typical enjoyment out of playing it every once and a while. That, and I don't play too too often, so the experiences stick out a bit more in my mind. Anyway, this was really interesting!
ReplyDeleteThanks. Yup I think those are key to enjoying it, particularly to pace yourself :)
ReplyDeletePersonnaly I don't collect at all, I'm just getting the game I want to play like I would on current gen consoles. I don't even want boxes as they take too much space and loose games are cheaper :)
ReplyDeleteI have 8 or 9 games tho, so not a huge number like yours.
Niiiiiiiceeeeeeee!
ReplyDeleteDefcon - careful, that is what I said back when I started getting into the Famicom :)
ReplyDeleteAnonymous - yeah!
I'll keep that in mind :D
DeleteI'm on the market for a "new" famicom, what would you recommend that wouldn't cost me an arm? I'm thinking about a top loader, there was a few pretty clean ones on eBay around 100€ shipped last time I checked.
For the new AV Famicom top-loaders they are pretty much impossible to find cheap these days. 100 Euros for a complete one including shipping is a pretty reasonable deal, they sell for pretty close to that (a bit less due to cheap shipping) on Yahoo Auctions within Japan.
DeleteThat's what I thought, quite a few goes for 150€ with the crazy shipping. I'll have to wait for a good deal :)
DeleteThere's nothing like the beginning where it feels like you're in a see of unknown games yet to discover/explore. Gotta savor the road, because there's no real going back.
ReplyDeleteAlso dig the old pic. Wish I had more pics from the early days, but no. Taking pics were a lot more of a hassle back then. Though I did find a pic my dad took back in 1990 for insurance purposes in a box the last time I visited for Thanksgiving.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v337/jviloria/IMG_3701_zpsbc9bbf8e.jpg
Wish had some from the 80s. That would have been a trip.
I caught the Famicom bug about a month or so ago after watching several episodes of Chrontendo. I've been living in Bangkok for over 6 months now and found a couple pretty good retro stores here. I bought an AV Famicom with some games locally, and had a Twin Turbo Famicom and 6 games shipped from Japan. I have a total of 15 carts and 10 FDS games (all but one work which I found a replacement for). I play my Famicoms almost every day and it was a cool moment when I beat Zelda no Densetsu (with the expansion audio and yelling into the mic!) for the first time that I never beat the NES version as a kid. I've checked out some games before via emulation (on my hacked Wii) and still do, but it's so much more awesome to play the games I’m interested in on the original hardware.
ReplyDeleteWhen I moved here from the States, I brought my PS3 (which now serves as a rarely used power hungry Blu-Ray player), Wii U, Wii (also capable of playing GameCube games), and 3DS. The last 3 still do get some play, but I've been spending the majority of my play time with the Famicoms since I've gotten them. I’m curious to find out if that will change in the coming months and years. I also have a Super Famicom and 3 games that I bought In Japan 4 years ago that I didn’t bring with me here, but I plan to pack it when I return from visiting my family later this year.
My list of games to collect is fairly short and I have many that I wanted already. I love your blog and have read it extensively the last few weeks. I've also scoured other Famicom sites to get as much info about the hardware and games as I can. I hope that you eventually hit your goal of collecting every Famicom game and I'hope to keep reading to find out if you ever do :).
Stealthlurker - I love the photo of the Famicom and Sega consoles. I know what you mean, I wish I had some 80s photos of me with my Vic 20 or NES.
ReplyDeleteShadowstar - that is awesome. I have heard from Thai friends that there is a pretty great retro game scene in Bangkok, it must be cool to live down there.
I know what you mean about the Famicom taking over your time compared to other consoles. It did that with my relationship with my PS2 a few years ago and I never bought a PS3!
Thanks for reading my blog too, I hope I`ll reach the goal someday:)
Having been a collector of various things my whole life, it's always fun to reminisce on older days and different collections. My FC collection right now looks a lot like the pic on your article, with just the FC and 25 or so games. My interest rekindled after my friends and I had an 8-bit party a few weeks ago and I got out the old FC I bought in Tokyo in 2006, which hadn't worked in years, and finally I decided to replace it with an AV modified one... and now I'm back in the game. :)
ReplyDeleteJonesy - yes, I have been collecting various thing my whole life too and also like to reminisce about the early days of a collection! That is cool that you are about the same stage as my collection was in this photo, that is probably the best time in a collection :)
ReplyDelete