Stuff to do/buy/celebrate in Paris

This summer I'm going to Paris for 1,5 weeks and I asked myself if somebody from this forum can recommend some locations I don't find anything about in travellers guides, for instance good import (jp) game shops or arcades.

If somebody lives in Paris, maybe one could even do a small Assembler-meet? ^_^ I'll be there from 11th-23rd of July and staying around Montmartre.

BTW Any recommendations for clubs/bars and other party locations? I'd like to get the max out of the 14th of July ;-)

 

There is quite a lot of japanese import games shops in paris, theres one area where they are all bundeled together.

My friend lives right in the centre of paris, i'll ask him the name of the area they are in.

I remember one shop it was amazing it was full of lots of rare japanese stuff, stars dremacasts, pearl white FFCC gamecube, tons of neogeo games, rare saturn stuff ect....

However its all pretty expensive, sop hoping for a killer bargain shopping spree might be hard.

Paris is such a great city

 

There are some good videogames shops in Paris (There is a list here, the comments are in French). If you want a little but interesting retro shop, there is RetroGame Shop. Very small, but a lot of import stuff (I once found a DD64 with 6 games for 450 €).
For Arcade, there is only one "La Tête Dans les Nuages" left :-( I think it is the biggest arcade area in Paris.
And for the 14th of July, just walk in the street, you'll quickly get involved in something with beer & girls :thumbsup:

 

Video games stores area is on the beggining of Boulevard Voltaire near the République métro station. But the prices here are damn expensive and the resellers don't know anythin... I remember them telling me i was doing such a great deal with Shenmue 2 Xbox for 70€ :evil:

About the ex-sega arcade "la tête dans les nuages" (website), it has some good recent titles and some good old ones but nothing memorable...

 

I don't know, I fancy a game of the unique Outrun 2 set up, apparently the only one in Europe where 8 players get to sit in 4 life sized Ferraris. It's as close as to driving one as I'd ever get!

 

I'll be there for 1,5 weeks, taking off tomorrow. Any last hints or recommendations?

I guess "Retro Game Shop" is quite interesting and I have a map to "Trader Games". Don't know anything about this one though.

 

you will indeed have a hard time hunting for bargains in paris, gaming related or not

have fun nontheless!

 

Celebrating inside Parris? Must be pretty roomy up 'there'.....

 

Alors, you guys were right... every game shop I entered so far (and it were many... the Boulevard de Voltaire looks like Akihabara - one next to the other and each one has an import section, often with Saturn/PC Engine/Super Famicom ect) had crazy prices. Nothing under 30 Euro in the "Retro Game Shop" (which really looks like a small version of super potato, filled to the top w/jp hard and soft from all ages).
Quite worth a visit though, a shop called "Maxxs" had an ultra big space just for retro, including EVERYTHING: GBA jp, all Sega consoles (evenPico), Neo Geo (plus NGCD), Twin Famicom, PC Engine and just everwthing else; I even found a Playdia ^_^

Sorrw for my orthographw though, french keyboards are ripping my nerves (they are indeed quite different from engl. and german ones -_-).

Bien, tomorrow is the 14th of July, one will see ^___^

 

Make sure you have a car, Paris is very very very large.

 

No, a car is really not a good idea in Paris, drivers in Paris are really crazy....
You'd better use the subway, it's really useful!

 

Man I had no idea there was such an import scene in paris.

I like to use the catapult:nod:

 

"ZOMBIE-NECROPHILIA-CELEBRATING"-Thread ressurrection!


Just had this blast from the recent past this afternoon when I looked at my pictures from Paris again and thought I might share some of them as well as a few thoughts on how I experienced the gaming scene there.

Ok firstly I want to share some pics of "Retro Game Shop". As I mentioned before in this thread, the prices were not hot at all but the atmosphere was great and in fact reminded me a lot of Super Potato. I had some chat with the owner and he affirmed to be the only shop in Europe like that.


While I can't prove that (there's at least another chaotic and freaky shop in Munich, though maybe not THAT full) it wasn't such a hard job to believe every of his words when he said he wanted to realize the Japanese concept of shops in France, lol.

Quite small place, so I couldn't take full shots of the shelves. Imagine just every console available, I even found Playdia, Pippin, MSX, X68000, FM Towns, Famicom & Mk3 soft there. Not to mention the amazing selection of hardware (Sony MSX, ROmROm AMP, Black LE DC) or the massses of SFC & FC guidebooks. I wonder who buys these in France
There were lots of pearls in the shelves (really not just trash, mind you) and I digged myself through the games for maybe an hour. You could play some JP Mega Drive jumper on the MD placed on the showcase.

What I was really keen on was a Mega Adaptor (mint), but 90 Euros were a bit steep. :crying:Anyway, great great shop!
This was actually the only shop I was taking pictures at. The other one, "Maxxs" was really spacious and they had also lots of uncommon items, but I don't want to bore you with that as I don't have any pictures anyway.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
@posters above
I had a subway ticket and that was actually quite cheap. 16€ for one week of unlimited roaming in Area 1 and 2 (covering entire central paris up the freeway-ring). The Metro is a very interesting subway and pretty similar to London's tube in many ways - just that it is not so incredibly fucking hot. Don't know what the Britains are doing wrong :110:
Of course I was on the Eiffel Tower, visited lots of great museums and in general, Paris was just a blast. Unthinkable what a loss it would have been if all this great architecture had been destroyed during WWII. Had a very French Julliet 14, with lots of wine, vodka, music and party, eh.

Some random shots.


July 14th

Montmartre, Rue des Abbesses (area around my hotel)

O_O

Metro station "Arts et Métiers"

The tourist shot ^-^

 

Wow, talk about digging up (your own) old threads!!

Nice pics! I like the one looking down the Eiffel Tower.

That shop looks like CEX and GamesX used to. I highly doubt it is the only shop in Europe like that. I'm sure I can think of more, actually!

 

They actually have a Book-off in Paris as well..

 

at least this was resurrected for good reason. those are some awesome photos!

 

I would disagree that it is the ONLY place. There are plenty of places for that. Hey, we have a bookseller right here that has sold books for thousands of Pounds.

In case you don't know, Scheele discovered oxygen and citric acid, amongst other things.

Arthur Rackham is a famous English book illustrator - he illustrated the Brothers Grimm.

Nicholas Bion was a respected French mathematician who made several instruments.

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/search/listResults.cfm?Maker=Nicolas Bion&SortBy=maker

I actually found a picture of a copy of this book on a Microsoft researcher's site who is interested in processors and such:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us...rinciple_uses_of_mathematical_instruments.JPG

When I last went in, they had about 8 of the Fairy Books by Andrew Lang, which are very respected and rare books of fairy tales. Many were first editions.

Oh, and there is a lovely bookstore in the Cotswolds that I used to frequent whenever I was down there, and use for book searches pre-Internet days. He had (and I touched!) a complete volume of the first English translation of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer by George Chapman if memory serves. There is a seller in Philadelphia who wants $32,000 for the first edition Pope translation, which is over 100 years newer:

http://www.baumanrarebooks.com/rare...iad-of-homer-with-odyssey-of-homer/63428.aspx

You know, those spines look awfully familiar. Perhaps it WAS the Pope and not the Chapman. It was an awfully long time ago. The asking price was £8,000 IIRC.

Bauman have a LOT of nice books. Well worth a visit (they have a gallery in NYC). Incidentally, the Homer books are among the top 20 most expensive of their literature books in stock, so it proves the credibility of my back street book shop, I'd say! ;-)

In short (too late, I know!), Paris is a great place to go for rare books, but certainly not the ONLY place. In fact, with the Internet and in particular eBay, is there really one physical place that is the ONLY place to source something rare any more?

 

Ah retro CEX and RetroX were great shops. Had some knowledgable staff too (most of the time).

Some of images are coming up directupload.net no hotlinking allowed. Please upload them to Imageshack?

 

SADLY, I have to agree on that. But keep in mind that the Internet does not radiate any atmosphere during the process of buying.
More than that, I just have to underline what a beautiful city Paris can be if you like books, especially antique ones. I entered most of the book shops I ran in on my way through the city and there were quite some highlights. The entire area along the Seine near the ÃŽle de la Cité is captured by those "box-sellers" who have everything you could wish for book-wise. Shitloads of (french & import) comics, original newspapers (historic events) and some have small glas showcases with rare and very old books. The oldest I was able to find was dated 1632 and cost almost 1000€ (an encyclopedia of biology IIRC). I bought some books by Sartre and Voltaire at such a box-seller as well as a 1945 copy of Tropic of Cancer.

A bookshop that is pretty famous is "Shakespeare and Company" close to Notre Dame, referring to her diaries even Anais Nin used to love this one ^.^ It's kind of a youth hostel that guests are going to pay for by helping out in the shop. Incredibly lots of books there, the new ones are rather expensive but you can also find some real treasures in the back (including lots of import books from Germany, Russia, Spain and more, I'm sure)

Imagine it to go on like that for about another 2 or 3 shop rooms.

A little cut from the Shakespeare shop:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcTa6LIzzDI

Video of some amazing bookshop in St. Germain-des-Prés with excellent prices. I would have loved to buy a "Complete Shakespeare"-edition in two volumes there, but the 1200EUR for this hardback leather gem from 1896 were not in my range :crying:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBFo7-dRY18

And two videos of "Retro Game Shop"
1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fqFizL1sBo
2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MozCDaXOOkQ

Sorry for the lousy camera handling (and quality >_<), but I have a very old model that can only record for 30s at once, so I had always in mind to get as much as possible on one take ^^