Game hunt guide for visitors to Japan.

any good place in Den Den Town in Osaka? :smt023

 

I disagree. Maybe the Japanese at Trader's (which is clearly aimed at Westerners) think 2500 yen for Dodonpachi is a lot, here in Holland it goes for 85 euros. Same for the PCB store GaijinPunch took me too, I bought an ST-V board for 7000 with 4 games for 550 yen, which would cost me about 150e for the board and 30e per game here. And I'm with you on the obscure little stores, takes some walking around but they're great.

Anyhow, some things from my limited experience:

Koiwa, near Tokyo
Pretty small suburb station on the Sobu line (I think), between Ichikawa and Akihabara. There's one very cheap gamestore right across the station (get out on the plaza side), and then the Chameleon club isn't far off - in the shopping street behind the other store, I got a map on my Chameleon card if anybody wants a scan, where I managed to buy an official mint Maracas boxset for 2000 yen, as well as a DoriKara for the same price. Well worth going if you find yourself bored.

Ichikawa, near Tokyo
Pretty big station on the Sobu line. Get off on the side where the Daiei and Mizuho is, and right opposite the train station is a small gamestore with OK deals, nothing out of the ordinary. For better deals, go right and then right again - under the train bridge - and walk a few blocks down the street to find this store on your right:



It sells a lot of anime, some CDs and a fair selection of games. Bought 2 boxed Wonderswans for 200 yen apiece, as well as a boatload of cheap Saturn games. Also, it's open until like 2am so no hurry

Further down the same street is this:



This store is THE BEST, they have very good system bundles - for instance, a Neo CD with 6 games for 6200 yen and a PS with 2 games for 1900 yen - as well as a fair load of good games for PS, SS and DC (on the right). On the left of the store is a load of FC cartridges, lots of accessoires & hardware (GBA's for 3500y), new Pocketstations for 2800, etc. Closes at 11pm.

Also, if you backtrack to the train station, the street behind the small gamestore & DaiEi has got this:



Not terribly good, but you might as well check it out as well. Good selection of PS & SS (Einhander for 200 yen), boxsets like a Sakura Taisen + mouse for 1000, new DC releases, FC games (not very cheap) and a lot of J-pop CDs starting at 5 yen :-D

There's also a store selling LOADS of pr0n and very few games but it's quite far away from the rest so I'll not mention it here.

 

Well, me too. The Trader's in Akihabara (and the Gamers too, for instance). They might be tourist traps but for me they were still damn cheap :-D

 

If you visit big chain shops such as Hard Off for your used gaming goods MAKE SURE you check ALL the games before buying. By that I mean if you're looking for sat Saturn Street Fighter Zero 2 and you see it for 500 yen then KEEP LOOKING !! You are almost guaranteed to find it again in the same shop for half that price. It's looks like it's not illegal to have the same items at various prices at the same time in Japan. So make sure you look carefully. Don't buy the first copy you see.

As mentioned above, video / CD rental stores and book stores can be a great resource for used games at great prices. I recommend that you stay clear of a chain called Chameleon Club. They are daylight robbers and will try to keep the cases of Nintendo games because they want them for display and even have the cheek to charge extra for the instructions. Odd that they only do this with Nintendo stuff though.

Yakumo

 

It's bad when you buy a game to find it again in better condition for less in the same store :\ Think I bought a few 1500en FC games like that, but at Trader so go figure.

 

@Yakumo, I love the Gaming in Japan articel at Segagadomain :-D !

 

Assembler:

Akiba prices *DO* in fact fluctuate. Not much, but enough to make something a good deal sometimes. I think you'll see the most waves in stores like Medialand which go from extremely expensive, but the best selection, to liveable prices.

Trader is probably the best all around store. They've got great collectibles, and sometimes have fair prices. The most noticeable thing about them is that they WILL mark things down. Delisoba Deluxe went from 178,000 yen to 65,000 yen, at which point I picked one up for someone.

Liberty is generally the worst place, and is very "chain". The only good side about Liberty is that your'e more likely to find a mispriced game than the other stores... it does happen.

Messe Sanno is a great place to check from time to time, and is by far the best place to buy your new stuff. For big releases, they almost always have some type of extra. At worst, it'll be a poster. If you're lucky though, you can get a nice LE telephone card. The downside is that they sell for retail, and not much less, whereas a palce like Sakura-ya will give you 10% in points, and maybe even 10% markdown on new games.

There are a few game stores up on the 5th floor of some buildings. These are worth going into from time to time.

PCBs:
Mak Japan isn't bad, and they have good service. They will test out any PCB before you leave the store. They also do mail order, and have a large selection of Sanwa parts in stock.

G-Front:
Rip-off... don't go, even though they have a nice selection.

There's another PCB shop down the street from Mak Japan (away from the main road) that has some fairly priced PCBs, although the selection is smaller than Mak Japan's.

There's a mail order shop in Gotanda (Tops) that has a decent selection and some fair prices. They will take furikomi or daibiki (COD).

I actually started making a Flash map of Akihabara, with all the good spots to stop at. About halfway through, and Gamespy's servers went tits up, so now my time is busy rebuilding the site in PHP. When that's done, I"ll get back on the map I suppose... if Assembler doesn't start doing it first.

Outside of Akiba:
There's only two shops in Shibuya worth going to. Tsutaya who has recently gotten into the games department has a very poor selection of DC/Saturn games, but has a nice selection of PS/PS2 games. Some of them are priced fairly... some unfairly. They do not have a point system, so do not buy new games there.

DORAMA has just opened a store in Shibuya which just like their other stores, is way overpriced. They also don't carry anything older than 32-bit. The store in Shimokitazawa (which is a very cool part of the city to hang out in and get toasted on a Sunday evening) has a better selection (despite it's smaller size) including SFC games, and some Famicom stuff.

Shinjuku:
There's some game shops there, but I haven't been to them in about 3 years, so will leave that to someone else to comment on.

 

Sigma Test Rigs? I don't think anyone sells them new anymore :\

 

GP: Oh yeah that reminds me, the Tsutaya in Shinjuku has a VERY extensive collection of game OSTs :smt045

 

Stupid question: Is 円 pronounced "en" or "yen"?

 

円 = En (kanji)
Â¥ (\) = Yen (latinised symbol/name/pronounciation)

They have the same meaning. It's quite common though to see it written like "yen" though even in Japan.

 

Yeah, but I was asking how it's pronounced. I keep forgetting to listen how Japanese people actually pronounce it...

 

You pronounce it no differently than a "yen" symbol. It's usually "en" if you're Japanese or know the difference.

 

As Kyuusaku says, it's pronounced "en" in Japanese. (There really is no "ye" sound in Japanese... not sure why it was romanized as such). It is one of those weird words that you would pronounce "improperly" in English (as yen in this case) even if you speak Japanese.

Assembler:
I bought my Sigma setup used from Mak Japan. Just gotta wait until they have one. They also show up on YJ from time to time, and Setup Japan (that I've never been to) has them listed on their homepage. According to their map, they're next to TRY. It's basically one road BACK (towards the JR line from the main road). They also do mail-order. (ugly site though).

If you're not so hot at searching YJ, I've got a Perl Script that can scour it for you, as long as you plug in the string you want to search (katakana in this case).

Ciao
GP

 

Glad you liked it :-D For those who've never seein it then you may want to check it out. Here's a direct link to that section of the site. Please note that you can't se the rest of my site from this link.
http://www.segagagadomain.com/gaminginjapan_select.htm

Enjoy :smt023

Yakumo

 

Great info from AntiPasta, much appreciated...

...Makes me wanna travel :smt045