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

[smork]

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:

[smork]

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!

[fpbrush]

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.

[Vectorman0]

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

[eskobar]

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 ...

[Drixxel]

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.

[schnuth]

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

Aaron

[Clownzilla]

Lol, how can anybody find anything in that place!

[Fuyukaze]

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!

[Coldguy]

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