I'm going to be spending a week in San Francisco next month, and I haven't spent much time there before. I don't live that far away (Mountain View), but I've only been there twice in my life, once for a day, once for about two days, and neither since I've moved to Northern California. Anyway, does anyone know of any good game shops there, either places you like to visit or ones that have interesting things? Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. I figure China Town would be a good place to look, especially for import games, but if anyone has some specific suggestions, I would very much appreciate it. Thanks.
So lucky, as I wanted to go there this summer. When I went, I was looking forward to finding multiple imports in China Town, yet all I saw was an import copy of Final Fantasy VIII and Legend of Dragoon. I didn't see many games shops at all. A suggestion would be to go see Sega on 650 Townsend St. Very cool place to be.
Chinatown was never that great for games, it's heyday was ~1995. You may want to check out the Pacific East Mall (I think that's the name) in Richmond. They sporadically have import game/VCD shops but naturally the stores are seasonal. If you do find a import shop in the city, you may as well pull your pants down before you enter, I've a friend who spent like $120 on FFX on it's Japanese release. There are some suburban shops with imports but they're few and far between, they might take a bit of research.
yeah there really isn't crap for import games in the city... there used to be an import shop on 24th avenue @ noriega, but it closed a few years ago, as did the toy store at japantown that had the occasional, horribly-overpriced console imports. One thing that you can find pretty readily in chinatown tho is grey-market GBA multicarts; you can also find the occasional famiclone, tho the junk shops on mission between 16th and 24 are a better bet for those. There also used to be a little photo-processing place in chinatown, that sold console copiers, modchips, and burned DC games, but it looks like they're gone now too.
