Fukuoka Famicom Shops VI: The New 007 and Hakozaki Flea Market

This is kind of an update on two earlier posts in my series on Fukuoka's Famicom shops: 007 and the Hakozaki Flea Market.
First 007. I went in today actually looking for something non-Famicom related, but I noticed that they had totally re-decorated their entire video game section. As I had my camera with me I decided to take a few photos of the new layout as it looks completely different from what it did 6 months ago when I made my first post about the place.

I really like what they have done with the Famicom section. As the photos in my earlier post show, they used to have their Famicom games hanging on pegs from racks. They've totally gotten rid of the pegs and now have all their retro video games on shelves:
I think this looks a lot better than the old system. Something about shelves....I just like them for some reason....
Well, at least I like them for Famicom carts. Having Super Famicom carts on shelves like this really just highlights how mediocre they look in comparison to their flashy, colorful predecessors:
I didn't buy anything as, despite the new look, the stock is more or less the same as before and I've got all the games they have. They did have one decent bargain though, 36 Super Famicom games in a box for 3,000 yen (about 35$ US):
For 2000 yen a similarly sized box of total crap could also be yours:
I was also glad to see that they didn't change a thing about the best part of their store, the glass showcase of expensive retro games:
Anyway, enough with 007, on to the Hakozaki flea market.
Actually, I don't have much to say about the Hakozaki flea market either. They held it last Sunday and I just happened to be passing through so I had a look. One new dealer who I haven't seen before had a selection of Famicom and Super Famicom games out:
These were actually a pretty good deal. They were 300 yen each and he had some good titles in there which usually sell for much more (Super Mario Bros. 3, some Downtown Nekketsu games, etc). I already had them so I didn't make any purchases, but I give him a thumbs up for charging a reasonable price for a decent selection of Famicom carts.

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

Kyoto: Birthplace of the Famicom

I just got back from a four day trip to Kyoto. As some of you are no doubt aware, Kyoto is the city where Nintendo was founded and where its corporate headquarters are located. It is technically the Famicom's hometown.

Despite that important fact, I didn't visit any Nintendo or Famicom related sites there. Mainly because the thought of spending my vacation time visiting an uninspiring piece of industrial sprawl like Nintendo's headquarters:
would be just too depressing to imagine.

Nonetheless I thought I'd make a blog post about it here, because I have a blog. This one.

Kyoto, for those of you unfamiliar with Japan, is much more well known as the cultural and artistic centre of the country than for any connection with Nintendo. It has a slew of UNESCO world heritage sites and about 2,000 temples and shrines, which is mainly what we went there for.

I won't bore you with pictures of them as it would be out of character for Famicomblog to feature them (except the one up top which is just there to set the tone really). I thought I'd introduce in photo form some of the quirkier sides of the city. Its a fun town, much like the Famicom is a fun console.

Its got a bit of everything that someone with enough sense to enjoy the Famicom would also find interesting. Highlights include:

Airplanes being used as facades over store entryways:
Lots of cake:
Strange notices in hotel rooms ( from the info sheet in our hotel room, note the second item):
Massive game centres spilling out onto busy sidewalks:
Signs saying "Don't mind the monkeys. We use large size fireworks in order to scare them off.":
Pizzas with marshmallows on them (video of me trying a similarly gross pizza here):
Giant lanterns with red mustaches:
Cute Buddhist statues:
Night traffic in Gion:
This...stuff...whatever it is:
Night shopping:
Flowering trees:
And ridiculously over-sized train stations (my video of the descent into the belly of the beast at night here):
All in all, a great city.

Only two things Famicom related popped out at me on the trip. One was this old sign in front of one of Kyoto's video game shops that we rode past on our rental bikes (great way to see the city, BTW). Looks like they haven't updated it in a while as they are about 3 generations behind:
And this building at the Eikando temple, whose color scheme almost exactly matches the classic Famicom:
I understand that Nintendo went with red because it was the cheapest color on the market at the time, but it is also created a color scheme that some temples and shrines use (though most choose orange rather than maroon).

If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend a trip to Kyoto. Its a lovely, silly place.

Super Mario Brothers Bottle Cap Collection by Pepsi

I don't like Pepsi much. I'm more of a Coke kind of guy. On occasion though Pepsi does come up with some promotional stunt that will cause me to join the herd and buy their inferior, too-sweet-for-my-taste soft drink over Coke.

When I first came to Japan way back in the 20th century, Pepsi was experimenting with a new promotional tie-in called Pepsi Man. Basically, they strapped one of these to every 500ml bottle you bought:
They had a few Pepsi Man related promos like this, usually involving Pepsi Man getting into amusing or scandalous situations. The character was way too self-indulgent to ever be popular though so they eventually stopped using him.

The idea of giving away bottle caps with characters on them proved to be popular though, which makes sense. When I'd go to the convenience store at lunch, I'd look at the soda bottles. The Pepsi one had a little bag on it with some prize in it. The others usually didn't (though Coke also sometimes runs these giveaways). Being a sucker for free stuff, I'd grab the one with the bag, even though I knew it was just a stupid Pepsi Man bottle cap inside.

It wasn't long before they were moving on to different kinds of bottle cap giveaways. Many of these were tied into movies and other stuff like these guys:
Between 1999 and 2005 each of the awful Star Wars prequels got a line of bottle caps, as did the equally awful Planet of the Apes movie. I have quite a few of these from my lunches back then. Ichiro also got his own line, as did the Peanuts characters. The Gundam one was my favorite, even though I don't know anything about Gundam and have never seen the show (they have a show, right?) The robots look pretty cool in bottle cap form anyway. The Adidas running shoe ones were probably my least favorite. I mean, really? Shoes? Why? You were giving us these amazingly intricate mini robot statuettes last month and now you expect us to buy bottles with these stupid shoes on them?

I digress.

These things were relatively fun to collect. At least they were if, like me, you are the type of person who enjoys collecting random stuff just for the sake of collecting random stuff. The bags they came in were not see-through so you didn't know which one you would get, adding a sense of mystery to an otherwise boring, run of the mill soda purchase. I never succeeded (or really tried) to collect any entire series of the things, but I probably have a couple hundred of them scattered about here and there.

In 2005 I left Japan for a while and missed out on what would be the best of all the series: the Super Mario Brothers Series. These would also turn out (along with the Star Wars Episode 3 ones) to be the last of this kind of Bottle Caps Pepsi would ever release as they stopped making them that year. End of an era, fun while it lasted.
Anyway, while these things were massively collectible back in the day, their allure has worn off with the passing of years and now pretty much every junk shop in town has some, usually for pretty cheap. I bought a big bag of them a while ago for old time's sake. They were cheap, can't remember how much though.

Inside the bag I bought were a bunch of the Super Mario Brothers ones. I really like these things. It is quite impressive to see the 8 bit pixels rendered in a three dimensional medium:
There are 30 in all. I don't quite have all of them.
I think these were a tie in for the anniversary of something Nintendo-related. I'm not sure what though. Were there any important anniversaries in 2005? Super Mario Brother's 20th maybe?
The details on some of these are quite impressive for something that you got for free. You can see the fear on the face of the red blowfish:
And Luigi looks like he is having a hell of a time getting up that vine:
I am also particularly fond of this juxtaposition between the facial expressions on a Koopa and the flying turtle. The Koopa looks brooding and angry. His single eyebrow just exudes frustration and annoyance with the world around him. The flying turtle on the other hand is smiling like an idiot. He is completely oblivious to the world around him and innocent as to its goings-on. You know if these two ever got together in a social setting the flying turtle would just annoy the crap out of the Koopa. If they ever make a buddy cop film based on Mario characters, these two would be perfect:
The Hammer Brothers one also looks pretty cool:
I leave you with the coolest bottle cap of them all. Lando Calrissian. Oooooh yeah:
Related Posts:

Planes, Trains and North Korean Propoganda: Tour de Super Mario Brothers 2011

M.U.S.C.L.E. Men and the Famicom: Kinnikuman Muscle Tag Match

bowl of muscle men

the sun's rays they do ponder
silent as they wait

- M.U.S.C.L.E Man Haiku #47 by Sean

I was at my favorite store the other day when I saw a clear bag on a lower shelf that was bursting with color emanating from within.

I stooped down for a closer look and was immediately taken back to a feeling I had not had in a long time.

The summer of 1987 was the time, a newly opened Exchange on a United States Army base near a small West German town was the place. The Famicomblogger as a 10 year old spotted a colorful box on the shelf. It was rectangular with a plastic window on the front revealing a couple of dozen molded plastic figures in a variety of vibrant colors.

Mesmerized he took the box off the shelf. Three dollars if memory serves. The rest is history.

1987 was a fun year, nearing the end of my childhood years but just beating the buzzer by a few months . M.U.S.C.L.E Men are probably the last toyline to be released with which I have a childhood memory. From 1988 onward I lost interest in toys completely so the attraction of anything more recent than that is lost on me.

So it was that a couple of days ago I stood in the aisle of that store, bag of M.U.S.C.L.E. Men in hand, pondering that year. As I've stated before, I'm always reluctant to buy toys from my childhood because I know that actually owning, say, a bag of M.U.S.C.L.E. Men won't turn the clock back to 1987 for me, no matter what the stupid sentimental half of my brain believes.

Nonetheless, it was only 300 yen for the bag. The exact right price point. Any more and the accounting department of my brain would have been demanding answers. Outlays of greater than 300 yen require justification. Why is this money being spent? What are the expected benefits of this purchase? What are the opportunity costs involved?

Endless mental paperwork would have been involved. Just a nightmare. Under 300 yen though pretty much anything, even a bag of M.U.S.C.L.E. Men, goes.
What I got wasn't technically a bag of "M.U.S.C.L.E. Men", but a bag of Kinnikuman men. A little web research revealed to me that they are basically the same thing. As a side note I should warn all of you interested in doing similar research to ensure that before you enter the phrase "muscle men" into a Google image search you set the SafeSearch feature to "high." Trust me, you'll be glad you did.

Any-hoo, Kinnikuman is a popular character here. A wrestler. I hate wrestling and always have, even back in 1987. I'm not sure why I ever bought the things when I was a kid in the first place, I think I just liked the colors. At any rate, I did buy them and now have to deal with the consequences, which is a sentimental attachment to a wrestling themed toyline. Its a relatively benign affliction and I can't really complain too much about it.
The toyline pretty much just came and went in the English-speaking world, but in Japan they've got tons of cartoons, comics and other crap devoted to these characters which I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in learning about. I rather just like them as inanimate colorful pieces of plastic that I can store conveniently in a bowl. Doing so comforts me.

They of course released a Famicom game based on the characters, which is the only thing other than the little plastic guys that I have any interest in:
This is one of the Famicom carts that I am particularly fond of. Its one of the reddest carts out there, you'll find. I do like red Famicom carts.

The game itself doesn't have much to say for itself. I looked up a few reviews of it, all of them bad. They generally concur with my brief attempts to play the game. Unlike most reviewers I quite like the clumsy graphics, but other than that its just not an enjoyable game.

Strange Shopping Days

Well, I'm still here. Anxiously watching as TEPCO officials assure us that everything is under control at the Fukushima plant and then give an awkward smile and cough as pieces of said plant come crashing through the roof, forcing the assembled members of the media to scatter.

Anyway, I have to give a big shout out to all of you who have followed up and made donations to charities involved in disaster relief. Your contributions will help a lot of needy people out and is really appreciated!

One of the effects of the unfolding disaster has been hoarding. In Tokyo, the news tells me that store shelves are bereft of pretty much all the necessities - water, food, batteries, etc. Everyone is stocking up. Just in case.

I was surprised to find that even in Fukuoka - hundreds of miles away - the same thing is happening, only at a less frantic pace. My local grocery store is out of some of the necessities like cheap bottled water (usually displayed on the shelves in the above photo) and toilet paper:
Damn these hoarders. Some of us actually need this stuff!

Anyway, back to the Famicom. I went back to Omocha Souko to try to forget about everything and maybe follow up on my recent purchases.

They had a ton of new Famicom games out. New Famicom day at Omocha Souko is usually a fun event in my day to day life. It doesn't happen often - maybe once a month - but its always fun.

Not this time though. Everything was ridiculously overpriced - something I've never seen at Omocha Souko before. Look at this, Dragon Quest 4 for 1000 yen (usually a 200-300 yen game):
Kinnikuman also for 1000 yen (also a 200 yen game normally):
And Family Basic, just the cart, for 1500 yen. This is the same place where I got the whole, boxed Family Basic unit including the cart for just 100 yen a few months ago:
I think they basically just gave the pricing gun to the new guy and he must have gotten carried away. I hope they don't give it to him again. I do not like the new guy.

Of Earthquakes and Video Games

Yesterday afternoon I was happily playing around with some new video game acquisitions I had made on my way home.

Little did I know that as I was doing so, a giant wall of water was racing towards the shores of Japan.

Then I turned on the TV and caught live coverage of the last moments of several towns - and their unfortunate inhabitants - as the wall of water moved mercilessly and relentlessly inland.
I put down and completely forgot about the games. Thoughts turned to friends and family up north - the things that matter.

Rest assured - me, my family and, as far as I can tell, my friends are all safe and sound. Kyushu is on the opposite end of Japan from this quake and the tsunami, when it did hit us, was weakened enough to no longer pose any threat to anyone.

All afternoon and all night I watched as the helmeted newscasters informed me of the un-ending list of death, destruction and human misery inflicted on the poor souls up north.
Waking up this morning, the waters have receded and the extent of the damage is becoming clear. Entire towns no longer exist. Hundreds of bodies are being pulled from the wreckage.

It is a sad day in this country.

Anyway, I thought I'd use my little blog here to remind all my fellow retro-game fans that the land which brought you the Famicom is going to need your help.
In the coming weeks and months those people up north who have lost everything are going to somehow have to put their lives back together, and that is going to be hard.

I'm going to go and commit myself here to donating my gaming budget for the next year to a charitable organization helping these people. I'm not sure what organization yet, as obviously it is too early to tell. But I'm putting that out there and you can hold me to it.

Admittedly, that isn't a lot of money as I'm a notoriously cheap gamer, but still, its something. I don't expect everyone to do this, but if we were all to at least devote the money we would spend on one video game to the cause, it would make a difference.