I just came to a great realization... NES was my only console until about 1993. I bought everything I could for it. I was obsessed. Which was why I was excited around 1995 to see a cartridge that a kid I knew had. It was a smaller than NES cartridge, attached to another cartridge/adapter...which apparently plugged into the NES. The cartridge had just a generic bit of Mario artwork on it. Thinking back, it might have been the Japanese Mario 3 artwork...anyhoo...I plugged it in... It wouldn't work, and never did. I was always really good at getting NES games to work...I probably had about 50 by then...but this thing wouldn't work. I could get it to come up...but it would always flash and reset as soon as it did...what did I see when it flashed? I saw a game select screen. There was a border that looked like bricks, on a black background, and there were about 20 games on the screen to select from, written in white. What I had in my hands, in 1995 or so, was a pirate Famicom multi cart, and a 60-72 pin connector...(it was in a plastic case, not one ripped from a cart) And this, was way back in 1995...well before the internet had taken hold of most people...(I got it in 95)...and well before you could go on eBay, and buy a Famicom and games...I just remembered this a little while back...and it hit me like a bag of bricks. Neato, huh...anybody else stumble into the world of imports like me?
As far as I can remember, my first hands on experience was around my cousins house who bought a Super Famicom on release with Super Mario World & Goeman. It was totally amazing, was also the first time i'd seen a scart picture, never seen anything so good in my life, mustve been around 1991. If that wasn't it, it would have been on his Megadrive through a converter, I remember Bare Knuckle & Ringside Angel in particular.
I was some lame PAL-only games for many years. All i heard about japan were some news in the magazine i bought every month. However, sometime i found a shop here in my city which had many import games and so on, this was the place where i finally saw how much i missed, and it did not take long until i modded my PSX to play import games. I also played and bought my first shmup there. I would love this store if it would still exist They are still on the internet but in another country so i have not much to do with them anymore...
I don't remember for sure, but it was on Master System or Mega Drive. I went to Portugal to meet the biggest part of my family, and got some games for Master System... This was on 1991, 1992 i think But i think i had already played Mega Drive japanese games on game shops.
Its a mystery that haunts me to this day, I got my NES pretty late (1993, my first game system) and it had "European Version" written on the drive door, whereas I remember not seeing that on my friends NES systems (everyone and his dog had a NES back then :smt040 ). We used to borrow each others games, but some of them wouldnt play on my NES whereas they worked fine on that of my friends... I remember the then-ubiquitous 190-in-1 cartridge that a friend of my brother's had (he also had a CD-i for which he was worshipped almost ), when I tried it on my NES the screen would scroll down for a few seconds (as it was supposed to do, to show the menu) and then the cartridge reset :smt022 However, months or maybe years later, we were staying in Belgium and my parents bought me & my brother a NES game called F-15, it wouldnt work on our NES so my parents brought it back, but the store sold them an import converter, which worked but crashed the game frequently :smt009 However, it played the 190-in-1 cartridge perfectly! :smt040
The first imported game I saw was a JPN Dragon Ball Z for Megadrive in some toy shop, ten years ago I think. I was so amazed by it for various reasons: -I had no idea at all about import games -It came with a MegaKey adapter -The cover had a completly different layout from the PAL Megadrive games and amazing artwork -DRAGON BALL Z!! At that time no one even knew what it was, the series (and jap anime in general ) was only aired a few years later in Portugal but I already knew a lot about it from some spanish mags I used to buy -The price... around $190USD The second time was a few years later while I was talking to a guy from a local videogame store, I peeked behind the counter and I saw a japanese Saturn My obvious reaction: A grey Saturn?? WTF?!?! There arent any import stores(that I know of) in Portugal so even today when I find any import stuff its allways exciting.
no actually scrap that.... It was when i was about 8 (11 years ago) with my friends consoles stuff like the nes/snes/game gear/ mastert system/ megadrive in Brasil... what can i say i had rich neighbours... :smt043
I think my first experience with imports was when I was 12 or so visiting my friend, whose parents either came here from Japan when they were younger, or their parents moved over here. The guy had this really weird looking SNES, all grey and rounded, and the controller had these really cool buttons that were red, blue, yellow and green, instead of the normal SNES shades of purple. It was called the Super Famicom, and I had heard of it before and vaguely remembered it being the Japanese version of the SNES. Fast forward to the November before last, when I got my very first import game - Neppachi VI @ VPachi for the Dreamcast (what could I say, it was cheap, and pachinko was interesting to me at the time). Now 3/4 of my Dreamcast library is imports, and I'm moving up the ranks in SNES, N64, Saturn, and PCEngine import titles as well.
1992.....Street Fighter II from Japan for my NES...I thought it was the coolest thing to have it months before any of my friends...I was 14 or 15... :smt040
My first experience was when my local Babbages (before it turned into gamestop) was showing off Pokemon Stadium. However, it was the Japanese version. I got to play it and I didn't understand what the hell i was doing :smt043 . That back then. Second time was when i was at my friends house who had a chipped PSX and him and I played DragonBall Z Legends. The very first import that I bought was Vib Ribbon for PSX. That game is freaking hard. I was able to get it where I can load up my own CD because for some reason it wont do whats on the game cd, that is of course if it doesn't have any to begin with because I don't know exactly if it does. My next import purchases will be Dragon Quest 4, Magna Carta (Korean RPG), Persona2: Innocent Sin, Growlanser 1, Sin and Punishment, Policenauts.
What do you use to play imports? It could be that the TOC is not read correctly (as with bootdiscs), which normally is not an issue, but as Vib Ribbon stores the audio in separate tracks it could be that the PSX cant find the tracks... I had the same thing with my PS-X-Change 2 bootdisc before I got my PS1 modded.
I have this game enhancer hooked up to my PSX. It really doesn't matter that it won't play the music included in the game.
My first import experience happened recently, and it is a kind of long story so don't kill me. well here it goes. While i play and enjoy the games of today on Gamecube, XBox and Playstation 2, I tend to go back to my SNES from time to time. Infact, I buy and play as many "new" SNES games as i do my GC, XB, and Playstation 2. One game i happened to stumble upon was Illusion of Gaia. It was one of my favorite games, so i decided to do some research. I found out it had a prequel and a seque, Soul Blazer and Terranigma. I quickly started searching for them. I found Sould Blazer in a matter of weeks. I played through it and enjoyed it as much as i did with Gaia. However, i could not find Terranigma at all. After doing some more research, i found out it was never released in America :smt022 So one day, i decided to buy a version on eBay, i just had to make sure i was getting an English version. After a few trys, i finally won a version of the game, and after shipping the total price was about $127 USD. Now, i had the game, but i couldn't do anything with it. So, i went to liksang, and i bought a game converter for like $14 USD. When the converter finally arived, i discovered someting was very wrong . The converter did not work. All i got was a screen that said the game was not meant to be played on my system. Down but not out, i went back to eBay and started looking for a PAL SNES, since i got an English version of the game. I found one that had the system, hook ups, controler, and a few games. Seemed like a good deal to me, so i bid on it. I won the bid and the totall price after shipping was $68.98 USD. The package arrived quicker than i had expected, especially since it was coming from Great Britain, and when it arrived i knew i had a situation on my hands. I knew the system would not work in America, so i searched the web for a device that would alow me to play the system here. I found a wonderful web site that had everything i needed. So, i bought a Universal to US plug adapter and a 100 watt step up and down power transformer for $30.54 USD after shipping. Now, i found out i needed a PAL TV to hook the system to, but i already had that since i lived in Germany for a while. So, when my converter and adapter arrived, i had everything i would need to play the game. It took me about five months and $240.52 USD to play this game, and when i finally finished the game i decided that it was well worth it. Terranigma is hands down my favorite game ever. This was my first import experience.
being a PC-FX maniac I suppose you own some PCFX games as well, and those qualify as imports too? :smt017
Sorry about the confusion. I meant my only European import experience. I have alot of NEC items, mostly PC-FX, so i do Japanese imports. Sorry about that. I have edited the old post to stop this confusion. :smt033
dbz game My first experiance as far as buying import games would be Drangon Ball Z super boduten 2 for super famicom in 98(boxed, instructions cheap at a rising sun nearby). I had always read about the super famicom and mega drive games,so I was excited finnally able to own an import game.Since then I own 2 import dc game(1jp,1uk), 2 super famicom games, and 5 saturn JP imports recently (you wouldn't belive how cheap I got metal slug.......................and that was by accident), and a import copy of fire pro wrestling d jp version for only $7................BRAND NEW!!!!!!!!!! Long wasn't it?
