First note, please don't post stupid crap about piracy or crap about china. I really don't care to discuss that for the millionth time again.:dejection: Does anybody know of any decent Game stores in shanghai? I want to maybe look around a bit and see if they have a few HK/Asn newer games i'm still looking for. I know there use to be a nerd mall (comic city) but it looks like that was shut down in 2010. I know from a few post online people have found a few smaller shops who get their hands on asn/jp releases a few days/week early. I've found reference to a few other places online but not sure they're still around or if they carry things other then pirated 360 software (at least that is what the org post seem to imply). As a side thing while on the subject. Any places downtown to get some figures or gashapon? Might try picking up a small figure as a gift for a friend. :encouragement:
Just an update but I had some success on this front. I end up going to one place today that held a solid selection for 3ds/vita/ps3 and even had stuff just out last week in japan. Prices were ok and sadly they wouldn't budge for me on trying to knock a 310 to 300 on a game. They also seem to only keep 1/2 copies on hand for most games. They didn't have the main game I wanted for vita (one piece 2) they did have the ps3 version and even the LE golden PS3. Oh well still happy to have picked something up. I got drum master for 3DS (was always just waiting for prices to fall but the game keeps selling and it's price hasn't changed much in japan). Later this week I'll post the address for record keeping if anybody here ends up in shangai.
I should post this before I forget. =P http://www.aibang.com/detail/22668792-419009303 There are also these two stores but I didn't get to check them out. The first one i've seen on taobao selling stuff. http://www.aibang.com/detail/829678958-695466842 http://www.aibang.com/detail/971764407-703445011 -edit- I wonder if the 2nd link isn't the game store in metro city shopping mall (I heard there was a store there but passed on checking it since my wife was not feeling well).
From experience, all the gaming shops in most cities tended to be next to each other... usually one long road full of them, or an underground market. It was like this in Beijing, Tai Yuan, Chang Chun and Foshan... I'd be surprised if Shanghai didn't have one - also, I'd try to bargain a bit more - Westerners are considered wealthy so they'll probably squeeze you for all you've got. If not, get someone Chinese to buy what you want instead, that may also work.
In Shanghai it seems there use to be a nerd mall where a lot of them were but it closed down and they are now quite spread out around the city. I found a few list online of areas where they might be but a few of those turned up nothing. Yet the hard addresses I found above were more fruitful. In Shenyang, I believe they are more grouped together (there is a pc mall where in the upper floors there is a section that is all game stalls). I was buying with my wife (who is chinese) but sometimes shops wont budge and the shop I did go to i've seen mention that they won't budge much but the price wasn't too far off for what I got (not massively jacked up, I paid $50USD which is what it goes for on play-asia). Maybe I would have been a bit more lucky if I made the shop do some work first before getting into the price (like taking it out of the case for me to look at and etc). It helped one time when I got a store to drop the price on initial D in half one time in shenzhen. =P (brought it pretty close to the $20 price it was already going for on play-asia at the time). I've read it sometimes work to bring up cheaper prices on taobao.
do these chinese stores happen to sell Korean Retro PC games like these listed here? http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/korea/korea.htm
Nope, just console stuff. Anything like that (which would be hard to come by) would probably come from a PC mall and would be pirated copies.
True perhaps, if they can't obtain the actual legit copies then just make pirated copies with copy protection removed/cracked instead since they're super rare these days
