Retro Shopping in Japan

Sometimes we all fall victim to nostalgia, a fleeting memory of a game played long long ago swiftly followed by the urge to play said game.  If you've been gaming for a long time chances are this happens to you quite often, old childhood memories of that old Nintendo game that you used to love so much make you want to play it so bad.

But, shit happens, you sell stuff or someone else sells it thinking its junk, something that makes you lose access to your old gaming collection.  Hell, if you've been following the blog, you'll know that a good portion of my collection has been stolen while in transit (at least it was all from this and last generation)

Sure, there are plenty of options for people into their retro stuff now, things like the virtual console, XBLA and PSN make getting hold of old favourites quite easy and it's made even easier if you're the kind of person into emulation.  But it's just not the same, there is a clear sense of happiness I get when I dig out an old console, hook that shit up and play it the way it was originally intended.  There is nothing wrong with doing things through the above methods, it's the same game after all, but there is something extremely pleasant about sitting in front of a TV with an ACTUAL SNES controller in your hands or whatever, it helps increase that nostalgic feeling.

Now I don't know about America but I've heard its a similar situation, where there are basically 0 stores that are willing to sell, or even take games older than the PS2.  In fact, I think just before I left for Japan, GAME in the UK stopped taking PS2 games altogether.  It's complete arse, the vast majority of my early game collection was sold off under the assumption that I wouldn't ever want to play old stuff again, but that was wrong.

However, Japan seems is the complete fucking opposite to this

This is a picture of a store near my apartment, they have pretty much every system ever, old and new for sale, old systems and games stacked to the goddamn roof, it's absolutely glorious.  You could spend hours in there and just constantly be discovering stuff you remember fondly as well as stuff you've never even seen or heard of.  Also, putting together a decent retro collection out of these stores won't exactly break the bank.  The people who run these places know how much shit is worth and they price pretty fairly.  But it's not just the small joints that provide old school gaming goodness.

"Book Off" is a huge chain around Japan but even a store like this will stock anything from famicom to PS3 although the selection isn't quite as good.

To cut a long, gushy story short, if you're into your old school stuff, Japan is the place to be.  Easy to get hold of and affordable and digging through these places is a ton of fun too.  So if you want that SNES collection you lost or never had, book a ticket and get your ass over here.

To end this post, here are some sneaky pictures I took in the first store.  I wasn't too sure if the owner would let me take pictures so I got some badly shot sneak shots, I really wanted to show just how much stuff this place had.

Mostly NES

Consoles, arcade sticks and assorted peripherals stacked to the roof.  Found a MSX joystick in the box on the bottom right!