Yesterday I took a video of the used SFC section in a 2nd hand game shop. Most of the games are in very good to mint condition. A far cry from the crap you see in the west, especially the UK. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTovh5QuFF0 Yakumo
That's pretty amazing. And you're so right about western used game shops, though now they are all probably gone thanks to GameStop. It probably has to do with culture differences why it seems like in japan these items are treated well where as over here most people treat things brutally as they don't give a fuck.
I know what you mean. 6 years back in the UK I bought a few PAL Dreamcast exclusives in a used game shop. I asked the guy what condition they were in to which he replied "Very good mate, look almost new" so I bought them only to discover the discs were scratched to fuck and one had mold on the instructions.!! EVERY used Saturn game I've bough here has a scratch free disc. Yakumo
My favorite explanation of a well-soiled US-only Saturn game I bought was, "Well, Mint means it works".
They're not all gone, but they're pretty rare compared to Gamestops. You'll usually find at least 3 Gamestops even in a small town, whereas you're lucky if you can find one independent shop that sells anything older than last-gen (Dreamcast, N64, Genesis, SNES, etc.). Recently a new one (a retro game shop) opened in my hometown, so I thought that was pretty cool. They have a pretty nice selection - I bought a Dreamcast arcade stick, Primal Rage for 32X, and Bomberman 64 there. It's seems to be doing alright, but I'm sure they get nowhere near the level of business that Gamestop does. It's a pretty sad thing to see - there used to be independent game shops all over the place. Now it seems near impossible to compete with the monster that is Gamestop. It's true that it's easy to get old games on the internet, but buying stuff off of the internet is just never quite as satisfying as buying it in a real store.
I dont see why Gamestop can't be tried like Microsoft was in the 90s. There doing pretty much the same thing. Using the market dominance to force small companies out of business
Ugh, I hate Gamestop...independent game stores were great if only because they had some weird stuff like old PC games in the big cardboard boxes on the shelves, and sometimes retro console stuff. Now all of those stores are disappearing because of GS.
Something beautiful. Japanese people surely treat their games well - I bought few used games with "disc scratched" note on them and their condition was great. Same goes for "junk bins" in video game stores - all CDs I bought worked fine, and most of them were in mint condition. That was a nice surprise after dealing with polish auction sites where people tend to write "mint condition/great condition" and after you get your stuff it's scratched to death. I guess that as MottZilla pointed out, most of people don't give a fuck about taking care of their things. One thing's for sure - after you visit japanese store filled with all this classic gems, life won't be same as before .
Yeah, I'm pretty fortunate to have a similar store within driving distance (Starland in Fairfax, Virginia). Their stuff is in great shape for the most part. Obviously pales in comparison to the video Yakumo posted, but I still enjoy going there. I try to make it there pretty often, but I do worry one of these days they'll be gone thanks to GameStop. I hope you punched him.
In Seattle Washington we have two stores, both part of a small chain called Pink Gorilla Games (formerly pink godzilla). VERY influenced by Japanese game shops, the design and style is based off the small shops in Akiba.
I dunno, I find that cartridges in the west are never in too terrible condition. Never many boxes though. Seeing an SNES or N64 box out there in the wild is pretty rare. For the record, though, I find that in my city there's quite a large amount of independent games stores, with more popping up recently. Columbus isn't THAT big of a city, and I can think of at least 10 non Gamestop stores here.
Mexican Black Market has the two extremes: Very well taken care of, expensive, but very awesome mint condition stuff from knowledgeable sellers, or buying a PSX CD without a case directly from the curb from this wannabe gangsta who thinks it's some sort of Hip Hop music or whatever. But the most common is really the CDR/DVDR Piracy stand with chinese knockoff accessories and used games in decent condition.
That's just because it's pretty hard to fuck up a cartridge, while morons who don't take care of their stuff can easily stratch discs to hell.
Sure there is no doubt, Japanese used game stores are still the best worldwide, even they are not as quality as 10 years back. But still there is no comparison.
