Does anyone live in a country difficult for gaming? (3rd world, africa, etc)

Just checked out Tectoy's "Guitar Idol", I was almost hoping it'd be using the YM2612 but it seems to have its own hardware.

 

It's not the company's fault. It's your country's tax policy. Just like it happens with Uy.

 

Well, the Zeebo was a nice try, hell it even had Resident Evil 4!

You gotta give them kudos for that

Anyway, it is complete bullshit, yes.

 

Yeah, it's true. I remember back in 2000, a black market seller was asking about U$S 1000 for a Japanese PlayStation 2!

 

Mexico sort of counts, but it's become quite a bit easier. In the 80s and 90s it was harsh. There's still serious price gouging in some stores, and some games are hard to get, but new stuff is waaaay more common.
Getting retro stuff was also very easy for a short while because of this, and now it's very, very expensive because it's "chic". There's a lot of price gouging there.

Back in the early 90s, there were like two stores in the whole city (and I live in the second largest city in the country!) that sold NES games. Department stores sold games at exorbitant prices, or you could go to the "black market" and get smuggled stuff. Also, not very cheap, but much cheaper than the "official" sellers. I mean, fuck, the Atari was still going strong in 92, 93 here. I got my Commodore 64 in 1987 or 88, and it was new and I was the only one that had one for a long time. All the games I got for it were all the games I ever had. Nobody ever sold Commodore games in my city. NES was not very common until 1989, 90. Snes arrived until 92-93. I got my first PSX in January 1998. (or was it August 1997?) and it was black market. When piracy really hit, getting original games was impossible. I had never even SEEN a Sega Saturn with my own eyes until, like, 2003 or 4.

After NAFTA, in 1994 (before American members complain, it sucks for us too in many things, like jobs or exports) games came to more markets. Still, prices were horrible, and the games selection was poor. Also, since the sellers knew SHIT about what they were selling, good games were very hard to come by. The PSX and N64 era was much better in ease of getting many games, but the really good ones still had to be smuggled or pirated. This probably continued until the late PS2 era , around 2005 or 6. ( I was in graduate school, so I didn't partake in so much gaming as I should have)
The good part of the late 90s and early 2000s was that we got a lot of discarded old American stuff and retrogaming was really cheap and bountiful.

Today, there's even official support for some systems. If it had been like it is today back when I was a teenager, I'd have a superb gaming collection. It was a little bit like our Uruguayan friends describe their own situation, and it enraged me to no end. It's very easy and much more affordable now. Once again, there's still many unfair practices (forced bundling beyond what any american Best-Buy does to rape consumers, gouged prices, lack of certain titles, XBLA delay of some releases) - but it's much, much better.

Still, I feel nostalgic about the 90s and early 00s. Those were the days when being a gamer really meant something.

 

Absurd taxes, down there, heh? It's like taxing the poorest of the poor.
Our government is as bad as it can get, but that doesn't happen yet. I say "yet".

When something is not produced and they pretend to enforce "protectionism" it is just another ridiculous way for officials to get money to build their lavish homes.

 

Yup.
There's a huge arcade center that opened in teheran a couple of years ago.
Top floor of some "ultra new luxury for upper classes shopping mall".
You had to pay a small fee to enter the arcade and buy an electronic card which was used to get credits (first time I had seen an arcade machine working without coins but with this kind of card)
I'll ask my brother if he has pictures or videos. I remember he went like mad when he saw that there was a LA machine gun cabinet, a game he loves and been looking for in japan the summer before (I think it was summer 2006 we went to that iranian arcade center).
There was, at least, 80 cabinets. I remember precisely of a couple of them: a megalo with metal slug X, another one with kof (98 I think), LA machine guns, MS pacman (^^), ghost squad, virtua tennis 2. There was also one of those ultra old nintendo gun shooting cabinet (the one with the cowboys).

My youngest uncle, who lived one year in France with my parents circa 1975 then in england with my oldest uncle before going back to iran in 1978, had a vcs2600 with a couple of games. But he couldn't tell me if he got it in Iran before/after the revolution or if he had bought it in Europe.

 

A huge retro arcade at the top of an upper-class shopping mall? How bizarre.

Got any more details on the Nintendo gun range thing? That sounds especially obscure.

 

the billionaire mullah (forbes call them this way) used to go and spend their money in Dubai with their kids. seems like they decided to do it in iran nowadays.

 

Bought Goldeneye for 180... old days...

 

Sounds like he's talking about one of those Wild Gunman PlayChoice 10 cabinets?

 

yup, thinks it was something like this.
anyway, just had my brother on the phone and he confirmed he took 5 minutes of videos around the arcade center.
he will mail me the encoded video next week so I can upload it on youtube
btw, he told me it was in summer 2005 (wasn't sure about it) since he went to japan in summer 2004 and 2006. that surprised me since there was a ghost squad cabinet and that the game was actually released in 2005.

 

I worked a short stint as a teacher in the Sudan in 2007. I vividly remember finding nothing but PS1 stuff in the souqs; not even the small PSone, but the big one, with a very weird model number... I think it was SCPH-9507. Everyone had satellite TV (mind you, I mostly interacted with the local elite), hardly any game systems - not even clones.

 

Maybe you guys should start a software house in Uruguay. Sounds like you could undercut the competition by a lot.

I'll invest if you do it.

Edit: Speaking of Zeebo, if anyone in Brazil or elsewhere can get me one I'll make it worth your while.

 

Here is pics of the magnetic card used in the iranian arcade center I was talking about:
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y110/cyberguile/IMGP4741.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y110/cyberguile/IMGP4740.jpg
No idea what it says, I can't read iranian. I'll ask though.
Design reminds me a bit USSR
And here is the video (I didn't cut the beginning so you can see the mall.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVLJcLO066g

 

Shipping and Taxes would again - kill it. Unless they were doing it illegally in which case its still a pretty rough circle.

 

Well, believe me I tried. I did all the quoting for renting a place to set up a store, and legally importing both new and used current gen game/consoles as well as vintage, from the US and Japan, but the taxes were insane.

Something along the lines like:

If I were to invest USD 20 grand for stocking up the store for say 6 months I would have to pay like USD 15 grand in taxes (some of which are reimbursed as you sell the items) and if I actually got to sell EVERYTHING at accessible prices (which was my aim, for example sell PS3 games at $75 instead of $180 or $200) I would make about USD 40 grand, which would end in this figures:

20,000 + 15,000 = 35,000 (investment)
40,000 - 35,000 + 7,000 (from reimbursed taxes) = 12,000 (profit)

12,000 profit from which then I'd have to pay employee salaries, more taxes for having the store, electricity/water/phone/internet bills, etc.

I had lots of things planned and went over it again and again but numbers just did not make sense.

Besides adding some fair play to the market, my aim was to crush console piracy here, as it is something really repulsive, there are LOTS of retail stores that only sell pirate games, and that is disgusting, but nobody gives a shit.

Exactly :shrug:

 

Im in Finland, not really hard per se, but the fact that things here are PAL, and not even all PAL games appear here, or they come 2 years late compared toevery other country, it can be annoying.

also, wtf with paying 90€ for a ps3 game -_- just because it's 2gb of data on a bluray instead of 2gb of data on a dvd doens't mean it has to cost 40€ more than ps2 games :dammit: