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Japan's Gamers Take the $10 Retro Shopping Challenge

In Japan’s bargain bins, you can get a lot of gaming for the equivalent of $10. Over the past two years of trips to Tokyo Game Show, I set out into Akihabara with yen in hand, looking to buy (roughly) 10 games for 10 bucks. At first I picked up games like D and Burn: […]
Japan's Gamers Take the 10 Retro Shopping Challenge

budokaimr2

In Japan's bargain bins, you can get a lot of gaming for the equivalent of $10.

Over the past two years of trips to Tokyo Game Show, I set out into Akihabara with yen in hand, looking to buy (roughly) 10 games for 10 bucks. At first I picked up games like D and Burn: Cycle, then found more obscure titles like Götzendiener and Soukaigi in 2009.

In a thread on the gaming message board NeoGAF, I attempted to rally the message board's many Japan-based posters to take the 1000 Yen Challenge, and three did, going for maximum quantity over obscure curiosity. Here's what they came up with.

BudokaiMR2: Spent ¥1,091 in Osaka's "Den Den Town" district and came up with 13 games (pictured top). "I tried to 0nly buy games that I had never played before," he wrote. Of the 9-yen (about 10 cents) copy of the Dreamcast adventure game Sakura Taisen, he says the store "just had a box of 50 at the cash register, all for the same price so I said what the hell."

  1. Virtua Fighter 2 (Saturn) - ¥10
  2. Biohazard: Code Veronica (Dreamcast) - ¥100
  3. Ehrgeiz (PS1) - ¥100
  4. Wave Race 64 (N64) - ¥20
  5. OverDrivin' GT-R (PS1) - ¥50
  6. Seaman (Dreamcast) - ¥100
  7. Counter Revolution War (PS1) - ¥100
  8. King of Fighters '96 (Saturn) - ¥50
  9. Samurai Spirits (PS1) - ¥50
  10. CyberBots (Saturn) - ¥252
  11. Sakura Taisen (Saturn) - ¥9
  12. SD Gundam X (Super Famicom) - ¥50
  13. Valken 2 (PS1) - ¥200

Kohler's take: I'd never have spent $2.50 on Cyberbots, myself. But Sakura Taisen for one thin dime is probably the single cheapest game I've ever heard tale of in Japan (aside from the free copies of N64 shogi games that Super Potato was giving out last year).

dcharlie

WhiteAce: Bought 15 games for 960 yen in Akihabara. "I did buy stuff here that I already own, but either in poor condition or missing the box," he wrote.

Not content to simply come in under the 1000-yen limit, WhiteAce also attempted to get the best games for his buck: He added up the average scores that the games received on the aggregation site GameRankings, then divided by yen spent. (Unrated games defaulted to 50/100 points.)

  1. Rallisport Challenge (Xbox) ¥100 - 87 pts
  2. Nectaris (PC Engine) ¥100 - 50 pts (n/a)
  3. Legendary Axe (PC Engine) - ¥100 - 50 pts (n/a)
  4. Super Family Circuit (SNES) - ¥100 - 50 pts (n/a)
  5. Biohazard : Code Veronica (DC) - ¥100 - 93pts
  6. Enemy Zero (Sat) - ¥50 - 69 pts
  7. Decathelete (Sat) - ¥50 - 76 pts
  8. Virtua Cop 2 (Sat) - ¥50 - 83 pts
  9. Tobal No. 1 (PS1) - ¥50 - 82 pts
  10. World Wide Soccer '98 (Sat) - ¥50 - 55 pts
  11. D2 (DC) - ¥50 - 64 pts
  12. Anarchy in the Nippon (Sat) - ¥20 - 50 pts (n/a)
  13. Winter Heat (Sat) - ¥20 - 78 pts
  14. Street Fighter Zero 2 - ¥50 - 50 pts (n/a)
  15. Dynamite Duke (Mega Drive)- ¥100 - 50 pts (n/a)

Total spend: 960 yen
Gameranking total points: 985
Ratio: 1 yen = 1.02 points

Kohler's take: An excellent haul full of super-cheap games with lots of play value. I don't know if I'd try to maximize my review-score return this fall when I go back to Japan, though: part of the fun for me is buying hilariously bad games.

cvxfreak

cvxfreak: Went for the highest ratio of games-to-money, spending only ¥690 (about $7) on 13 games. This, plus choosin mostly good-to-excellent titles, helped him obliterate WhiteAce's games-to-score ratio.

  1. Dead or Alive 3 (Xbox) - ¥100 - 85 pts
  2. Sonic Adventure (DC)- ¥100 - 87 pts
  3. Sega Rally Championship 2 (DC) - ¥50 - 82 pts
  4. Sega GT Homologation Special (DC) - ¥50 - 81 pts
  5. Soul Calibur (DC) - ¥50 - 96 pts
  6. Ready 2 Rumble (DC) - ¥50 - 84 pts
  7. Fighter's Megamix (Sat) - ¥20 - 50 pts (n/a)
  8. Fighting Vipers (Sat) - ¥20 - 50 pts (n/a)
  9. Virtua Fighter (Sat) - ¥50 - 89 pts
  10. Virtua Fighter Kids (Sat) - ¥50 - 73 pts
  11. Virtua Cop (Sat) - ¥50 - 75 pts
  12. Virtua Cop 2 (Sat) - ¥50- 83 pts
  13. Shinseki Evangelion (Sat) - ¥50 - 50 pts (n/a)

Total spend: 690
Gameranking total points: 985
Ratio: 1 yen = 1.43 points

Kohler's take: Somebody sure likes Sega, and fighting games. These are two categories into which much of Japan's stock of almost completely unwanted games tends to fall. This is also why game stores must love to see vacationing foreigners milling about – if tourists didn't take these back to their home countries, Japan would be buried in Fighting Vipers.

Besides the Japan residents who decided to take the challenge, Kyle Orland at Crispy Gamer attempted it in the U.S., bumping the maximum spending limit up to $20 because older games are much more expensive here. He still managed to find some great bargains on 14 games across a variety of systems by scouring all the used-games stores in Pittsburgh.

"Was raiding the ultra-bargain bins worth it? For me, I'd have to say it was," he said. "I haven't had a chance to really dive into any of these 14 games yet, but I can't imagine that the combined experience of all of them won't be worth $20."

Want to try something similar? Give it the hash tag #1kyengamer on Twitter and post your findings.

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