It's really gone downhill. I'm surprised they even waste shelf space on all those 300 yen ps2 games. Retail space is expensive and you'd think they would just throw it all away and put something more profitable in.
Don't be too sure, I went to Hard Off on Saturday and bought a crap load of PSX and PS2 games for 200 yen each Came away with 26 titles. Land isn't too expensive down here unlike the big cities so they can fill shelves with this kind of stuff as they have the room. The Hard Off here in Kokura where I work has far less PS2 and PSX games due to rent bring higher. It's different from store to store really.
Time flies, to think that your son is old enough to be off contemplating cards. What cards he into? Duel Masters? Yugioh?
I'm curious to know if any similar stores can be found in the US or Europe actually. Of course prices would never match the low ones from Japan but I'm looking here for quantity and variety. The only example I have in mind is a shop I once visited when I was in France. Prices were indeed prohibitive.
I too would like to see more videos like this if you have the time and interest in doing so. It makes me long for the 90s when I last went to a good gaming store. All we have now is Game Stop and a local store aimed at hipsters with insane prices.
I thought about doing a video at Hard Off again last Saturday when I picked up the PlayStation stuff but to be honest I thought it wouldn't be interesting to others as it was the same shop. Plus I wanted to focus on picking up some games for the next Retro Core video. If I go to a different store in the future I'll video there.
There's some stores in NYC like this but the prices are abusive and they have shady tactics. I once tried to buy a game system and they brought out a beat up one vs the one in the window. They pretty much chased me down the street offering me better and better ones but would never sell me the one shown in the window. Typical shady business, they sell EU versions of rare genesis games like they are the Japanese versions, a friend of a friend bought a "rare" game that was just the EU MD version that was more common, but at the JP MD price of $300. In short never buy anything in NYC from a store as you'll get things like faked converted neo geo carts and worse.
I still need to check out BookOff in Midtown, and maybe the "new" J+L location since it's only 6 blocks away. Maybe it's because I'm older now but the scene here is lame - Chinatown Fair is a shell of it's former self and since J+L moved there's nowhere in Chinatown for import / retro games. Videogamesnewyork in the East Village is great to look around in but they're way way overpriced and kind of shady. There's a new place at Queens Plaza called Jadan Gaming Express - I need to check it out whenever I can get up there.
The NYC Book-Off is OK, but they tend to charge close to eBay prices on a lot of things (especially the rare stuff). Their selection of older games is also full of the usual fare: mah-jong, horse-racing sims, pachislot, and baseball. It's still worth a visit, though. You never know what will show up on the shelves, and they have walls of CDs and manga for about a buck apiece.
