I'm planning a trip to Taiwan. I'd like to stay approx. 10 days. I will stay several days in Taipeh and I would like to spend some time for our beloved hobby ;-) Are there any good flea markets or shopping malls in Taipeh? I'm mainly interested in retro games, pirates, clones and so on. A lot of these stuff was produced in Taiwan in the eighties and nineties. Those stuff should be still floating around. Furthermore can you recommend any good Arcades (new and old games)? btw, if you know a good sight or city/island which is worth a visit, let me know. I'd also like to explore the nature/culture of Taiwan and go swimming.
I lived in Taiwan for 4 months in Taipei, Kaohsiung, Tainen and Banqiao and found near bugger all, I went to a lot of shops, places, markets, flea markets and the only useful thing I found was an arcade spares shop that sold cheap Wei-La monitor chassises. Most game shops rarely stock anything retro, the nearest you are going to find are famiclones.
I was in Taiwan for a month back in 2010 and found a few things at night markets. If you get a map at the airport you'll be able to find those, I went to practically every single one, but it was only a couple in all that really had anything. There's also the underground shopping mall, there's a couple game shops in there that had a ton of stuff. Forget the name of the place now but a Google search should help! Flea markets, forget it. Night markets are the only places worth it, flea markets have absolutely no games and are a complete waste of time. It's also worth noting there are some places that have games that you'd never even enter since they aren't game stores. I remember finding a supplies/toy shop that looked desolate that had a case of brand new FC games at the entrance, including Sachen junk. Pretty much don't be shy and be willing to enter anywhere that looks like it might carry toys, since you never know. There was also one night market I forget the name of, but I wandered off from it and near a back alley found this one shop LOADED with tons of old stuff, so much that they had two extra shelves out on the streets filled to the brim with even more. Of course, thanks to that a lot of the stuff was sunfaded Ah, wish I could go back. If I ever went with anyone I would be able to show you all the places I went by memory, but as far as names go I have no idea for the most part.
Wikipedia has an article about shopping in Taipeh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_in_Taipei There are many underground shopping locations. Probably you remember one of these locations
btw, if anyone from ASG lives in Taiwan and is interested in meeting, let me know. It's always difficult to find interesting places for the nightlife which aren't crowded of tourists (e.g. discotheque).
Game Shops Unfortunately Taiwan is not a good place for retro gamers. A lot of shops sell PC games only. If you find console games, then mostly for the current gen systems and PSP, PS2 and NDS. I found 2 shops in Kaohsiung selling a few retro games - one had NGCD and DC games, but these were sunfaded. The seller wanted 1.000 NTD per game, I even haven't looked at the titles. Another store had a handful of retro games for DC and Saturn and there was also a CoreGrafx on display. price of the games was ok. Bought Rescue Shoot NTD100, Powerstone 2 NTD350 and Daxter PSP NTD200 there. The shops are located in the Computer Shopping Street near Kaohsiung Main Railway Station. A shop in Taitung near the old railway station had a bunch of boxed Mega Drive games and a few boxed N64 games. However the N64 boxes were heavily sunfaded. Bought Gynoug and Sailor Moon for NTD500 both there. Another gameshop is at the Night Market near Carrefour, however without any retro games. Bought Parodius PSP for NTD200 there. Taipei has several game shops in Guang Hu Digital Plaza. One shop sells boxed N64 games for NTD200 - all games are near mint. Bought StarSoldier and Rogue Squadron. The other shops have no retro games. btw, games are usually NTSC/J versions.
Arcades Taiwan has also some Arcades. I only list the more interesting ones. Toms World in Taitung had some nice Arcade cabs, like Blazing storm and a Wii-like Ninja game from Konami. Janfusun Fancy World has a good Arcade. However during our visit a lot of cabs had been shutdown. My favourite Arcade was in the EDA World outlet shopping mall near Kaohsiung. Played Dark Escape 4D there.
