For a videogame junkie, shopping in Tokyo is to be struck by the sheer catatonia that comes with boundless choice: When everything in the world is set forth in front of you, which do you actually buy?
I got all my major purchases out of the way many years ago. When I was living in Japan, I bought the vast majority of the games I'd coveted in my youth and teen years: All the old Nintendo hardware, complete collections of Squaresoft's 8- and 16-bit games, Capcom's fighting games for the Sega Saturn, etc. At this point, if it's relatively easy to obtain in Japan and I don't already have it, it's because I don't want it.
Then again, as we all well know by now, there's always a price at which I won't pass up any gaming curiosity that I don't already own. And there are some things that are difficult to find even in Akihabara, some of which I've already written about: Squaresoft's old disk game Akuu Senki Raijin and the final two games for Nintendo's 64DD.
Here's the rest of the stuff that I couldn't help but blow some money on in Tokyo. Actually, I'm lying: I'm still going to be writing about my purchase of an SG-1000, Sega's first game system, and I did undertake the 1000 Yen Pile of Shame mission again, with hilarious results. This is everything except that. Yes, my suitcase was over the weight limit, thank you for asking.
(Assume that 100 yen roughly equals $1. It's fluctuating a lot.)
At top, it's Pac-Land for Nintendo's 8-bit Famicom system. I actually bought this because I had to. We were in the Sofmap games store in the middle of Akihabara, and they were having a major sale on all their old software. Buy three, get 30% off; buy five, get 50% off.
The only restriction was that "premium" software -- copies of rare games like Metal Slader Glory and Dracula X, kept in a glass showcase -- was off limits. Otherwise, if you wanted to buy four games that cost $50 each and one ninety-cent copy of Pac-Land, you'd get 50% off everything.
That is a serious deal, but that of course meant that most of the really good stuff was already gone. But since 1up's David Ellis and Jeremy Parish had some stuff they were thinking about buying, I said I'd grab two games and get us up to a combined 5. At 90 yen before the discount, Pac-Land got us there with little additional expense. (Jeremy still wins with his 600 yen Saga Frontier tea set, though.)
Bottom row: I actually didn't pay anything for Saikyou Habu Shogi, and I still feel like I got ripped off. The retrogame store Super Potato was actually giving them away for free over the weekend:
Why? Well, because it's the Silver Week grouping of national holidays, but more importantly because Super Potato has so goddamn many of these that they can't even sell for their usual price of 50 yen.
Habu Shogi is actually quite an interesting historical footnote. It was one of only three launch titles for the Nintendo 64, released on June 23, 1996. Published by Seta, it was the only third-party game available at launch alongside Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64. The Japanese chess player whose picture appears on the cover, Yoshiharu Habu, swept all seven major championships in that year.
Even with the young Tiger Woods of shogi on the cover, it didn't sell. I remember reading at the time that Mario sold at a one-to-one ratio with the hardware, Pilotwings one-to-ten, and Shogi one-to-one hundred. End result? It's been available new at a few Japanese stores for the last thirteen years.
Other N64 games that were produced in too-high quantities and are still available new at Super Potato include *Pilotwings 64 *(natch), Ogre Battle 64, and Wonder Project J2.
Moving on, there's Gunstar Heroes Treasure Box, part of the "Sega Ages 2500" collection of 2500-yen remakes and ports of the company's old games for PlayStation 2. This is considered to be one of the best -- not only does it collect pixel-perfect ports of the Genesis versions of Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Headdy, and Alien Soldier, it's got all kinds of options to tweak your experience. You can play the overseas releases of each game, run them in progressive scan, add fake "scanlines" that simulate the classic raster-scan TV experience, and even turn the sprite flicker on and off.
In a similar vein, there's Akumajou Dracula, the original arcade game that spawned Castlevania, rereleased for PS2 in the Oretachi Geesen Zoku (We, the Arcade People) line of 2000 yen re-releases of classic arcade games. The software here is considerably lower-rent, with none of the fancy options of the Sega Ages release. But what you get for your 2000 yen here isn't just a ROM on a disc -- there's also a plethora of tchotchkes inside:
L-R clockwise, there's the box, the game CD, a collectible trading card, mini-strategy guide (helpfully sealed to prevent you from casually cheating), the instruction manual, and most interestingly a soundtrack CD and a DVD video showing a complete game playthrough.
As you might imagine, given the fact that this crosses over into the realm of Castlevania collectibles, this tends to be one of the more difficult to find and expensive games in the collection, so when I saw it for 2,100 yen I figured that now was the time to add it to the pile. The other releases in the series (stuff like Contra, Pooyan, and Time Pilot) don't appeal to me nearly as much.
The thing next to it isn't a game, it's the Studio Ghibli DVD of Tales from Earthsea, directed by Hayao Miyazaki's son Goro. It wasn't exactly well-received when it came out in Japan in 2006, and licensing issues are holding its release in the U.S. back until summer 2010. But why wait, when a used copy is just 1,200 yen? Especially when the Japanese releases of Ghibli films always include English-language subtitles and sometimes voiceovers.
Finally, there's Takt of Magic, a role-playing game for Wii developed by Tecmo and published by Nintendo. Is it any good? Well, it doesn't seem as if Nintendo's going to release it in the U.S., so perhaps that's your answer. More impressions to follow. It bombed in Japan: I bought this brand new copy for just 1,480 yen (it was 5,800 when it launched in May).
One more purchase in the great Sofmap 50% off sale: The Manhole. I remembered the name because I'd just written about it for our story about Myst's 15th anniversary: It was the first game designed by Cyan Worlds. It's a game built using the Mac's HyperTalk scripting software in which you click various areas of a screen to explore a Wonderland-style fantasy world.
Interestingly, the 1990 PC Engine version, by Sunsoft, mimics the Mac's interface:
And you can even change the text into English. At 175 yen (and to help bring down the cost of my friends' more expensive purchases), it's certainly a curiosity.
By the way, the sticker on the front says that the low price is because the case is damaged and the disc is scratched; further investigation reveals a small crack on the back and some almost invisible scuffs on the disc, the sort of thing that would cause an eBay seller in America to label this OMG MINT A+. Japan's obsession with perfection is our gain.
To its right, the soundtracks to Blue Dragon and Soma Bringer (840 yen, 2,310 yen). Not much to say about these besides the fact that they were relatively cheap and I like the composers (Nobuo Uematsu, Yasunori Mitsuda).
No music lover's trip to Tokyo is complete without going to Nishi-Shinjuku, the bootleg-CD district. I'm guessing that the advent of the Internet as a free way of exchanging soundboard recordings of band concerts has probably diminished the appeal, but stores like Backtrip Records still have racks full of demos, live recordings, and unreleased rarities. I found this recording of Lindsey Buckingham's first solo concert for just 300 yen.
Time has not been kind to the price of Blood of Bahamut, a Square Enix RPG released on August 6. By the time I left Tokyo, new copies were just 2480 yen, less than half price. I played a bit on the plane -- it's a touch-controlled game that clearly borrows from Shadow of the Colossus. Your goal is to defeat Gigants, massive ancient creatures with unfortunate blue glowing weak spots on their bodies.
You move your character with the D-pad and attack with the touch screen: Hit weak points on the Gigant, for example the blue eyeballs of the first monster, and you'll do more damage. Once you've done enough, you'll be able to hit the weak spot. It's an interesting concept -- I'll probably write more when I've gotten more of a chance to mess around with it.
Finally, there's Tingle's Balloon Fight, the exclusive DS game that Nintendo gave to Club Nintendo platinum members in Japan a couple years back. I have one, but a) it's still sealed and b) I can't seem to find it, so when I found a loose copy for 2000 yen it seemed like a good idea.
It's pretty much a dual-screened version of the NES classic: You can play with up to four balloonists, and there's a Balloon Trip mode that periodically saves your progress as you make it to harder and harder levels. Nintendo couldn't have sold this on its own, but as a free customer-loyalty giveaway, it's beyond awesome.
This incredibly long post has been brought to you by Jet Lag (motto: You'll stay asleep until 5 p.m. or your money back).
Images: Chris Kohler/Wired.com
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