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Thread: Local game stores, Japan style (lots of pics!)

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    Pac-Man (Level 10) smork's Avatar
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    Default Local game stores, Japan style (lots of pics!)

    I promised a few months ago that I would take some pics and write about some of my local game stores. I've finally gotten around to starting this and will try to update this periodically.

    I'd like to start with the store closest to my apartment, Urayasu Kanteidan.



    This store is a bit of an enigma. They are less than a 15 minute walk from my house and are open until 2am, and they have tons of selection (I got my Towns Marty here). They are very disorganized and pricing is almost random, so it's a bit of an adventure.

    The store carries all sorts of stuff -- games, music, porn, movies, toys, manga, even some used clothes. The games section is probably the biggest (along with the porn and manga).



    The first section you see is the console and accessory section. Some of the consoles are ultra minty and complete (like my Marty was), others are more well-worn. Pricing takes condition in to consideration, though.

    It's hard to tell, but amongst the PS1s, Saturns, and GCs are an SG-1000, a PC-FX, and a Super-Grafx.

    They have consoles stuffed everywhere -- look on top of the case in this picture:



    And way-y-y-y up top in this one (I have no idea how one would retrieve a console from up there):



    Here's some more, a little closer to ground level.



    That's a boxed Super-Grafx, a Loopy, a Pico, a boxed front loader NGCD, and a boxed Twin Famicom, among others...

    Stuff is fairly mixed together. Here's a section with GC hardware, N64 carts, Hu-cards, GB carts -- and an Aura Interactor (!)



    This is their 'showcase' -- I use the term liberally since half the time the entire case is buried behind boxes. There's some good stuff in there (old handhelds, etc) but who can tell for sure?



    Here's a wall of FC and SFC carts. There's some random stuff mixed in there as well, like a few Neo Rom carts, some PC-FX, and who knows what else.



    Along the back wall there's a bunch of loose carts:



    A bunch of bargain bin FC/SFC games. That's hentai manga in the back -- this is Japan, after all:


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    Pac-Man (Level 10) smork's Avatar
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    Here's a bit more that wouldn't fit in the first post.

    This place has a bunch of current-gen and last-gen stuff, too. There's also a big strat guide section.



    And finally two racks of bargain packs. There's all sorts of gold in here, usally. There's a some MSX and even some x68000 in there:





    There are more retro game stores very near me, this is just the nearest. I'll post more stores later!

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    Very cool, thank you for sharing. I look forward to seeing more stores.


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    I always love seeing posts / pictures like this . Even better that you are looking at local stores instead of just the same big akhibara names. Nice post ! Looking forward to more.

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    Default :D

    I am impressed !!!!!!


    Those stores are one of the most important reasons for me to travel to Japan; wanna go there in my honeymoon next year ...
    Las calles no son basurero, POR FAVOR TIREN LA BASURA EN SU LUGAR !!!!

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    Good lord, the sheer magnitude of selection in that store is staggering. Oh, the hours I would happily invest spelunking about..

    Awesome post, thanks for sharing.

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    I really need to get myself back to Japan some day.

    Aaron

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    Lol, how can anybody find anything in that place!
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    As much as I enjoy looking at all those wonderfull games, the devil in me suddenly wondered how long it would be to sort them. All of them. Still, nice stuff! Good to see a few big box games in the shots I actualy have. That Love Hina game's as big as a suit case!

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    Smork, I will get ahold of you to get this info on the site. At the moment I am rehauling it.

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    I am so jealous of you smork. Well, jealous of were you live. I'm also sending you a pm about something related to the thread.
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    Why? Once you've seen one partially-exposed butthole you've seen them all.

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    Damn, that is some beautiful inventory.
    Currently catching up on PSN, WiiWare, Wii U E-Shop and Xbox Live Arcade exclusives I missed.

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    Whoa, motherload! Great pics. I'd love a store like that over here..

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    That's awesome. This is just giving more reason for me to get my ass in gear to continue my studies and head on over to Japan to study abroad and then possibly working over there after college. Nice work, Smork, and I'm looking forward to seeing more pics from your local stores.

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    Dude... next time I'm in town, we GOTTA hang out and need you to show me around just a little!

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    Holy shit! I want to live in Japan now. ^_^

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    This further proves my case that local stores are awesome.
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    That's a great store! Where is Urayasu?

    I also live in Japan and have a couple of stores like that near me, I'd always thought it was because I lived in the country so stuff stayed on the shelves for longer than they would in some of the more famous collectors spots.

    I was in Takarajima earlier and saw one of the guys I recognised from a local store wheeling out their entire stock of Dreamcast/Neo-geo/MSX/Saturn etc. games which he'd obviously done a deal as a job lot with.
    It explained a lot as to how his store had ended up looking like this one does.

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    That looks like it would take hours to look through there.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Okagawa View Post
    That's a great store! Where is Urayasu?

    I also live in Japan and have a couple of stores like that near me, I'd always thought it was because I lived in the country so stuff stayed on the shelves for longer than they would in some of the more famous collectors spots.

    I was in Takarajima earlier and saw one of the guys I recognised from a local store wheeling out their entire stock of Dreamcast/Neo-geo/MSX/Saturn etc. games which he'd obviously done a deal as a job lot with.
    It explained a lot as to how his store had ended up looking like this one does.
    Urayasu is in the Tokyo area. Disneyland is in Urayasu, for reference sake. Maybe 10-12km from Akihabara, just over the border in Chiba. It's not out of the way at all for someone visiting the east side of Tokyo... There's another decent game store a few blocks from that store, though the prices tend to be a bit on the high side there.

    I love these sorts of jumbled up local stores. They are so interesting, even if the prices aren't fantastic (though I've found most of them to have great prices on most things). My all-time fave is this one I used to go to down in the Osaka area when i lived there -- they had stuff shoved everywhere, and some damn fine finds. At one point they had a pile of loose Twin Famis for something like 3500yen, boxed Neo CDs for 2000 yen, NEW Neo Pockets for 500 yen. Obscene! They even had a pile of Dreamcast Karaoke systems (a pile = at least 20). Last time I was there maybe 6 months ago they didn't have anything special like those deals, but you can imagine they'll have them again.

    Where are you in Hokuriku, anyway?

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