Hello, I’m Oliver Jia, the “Japanese resident” mentioned in that Time Extension piece. Appreciate your thoughts. Just a few points of my own. -I’m not Japanese. I’m an American living here like you. I think the author of that piece was framing me as a “resident who lives in Japan” so the wording in the headline is a bit weird, but whatever. -I got in touch with the author and I’ll be writing my own piece on this topic which will be a bit more nuanced. I agree with many of your points here and was glad to see you confirm my other observations like prices being very reasonable in the early months of the pandemic. It was pretty much the opposite overseas, so I’ll be highlighting that difference. -I was specifically talking about that particular Surugaya in Kyoto for the most part, but I also noticed similar things when I visited Den Den Town in Osaka a few weeks ago. I mentioned the tourists because as someone who frequented that Surugaya regularly, I’ve seen with my own eyes a mass increase of foreign visitors and people clearing entire shelves. A lot of them are going to be reselling these games overseas and I’m not a fan of scalping, but in my tweets which the article cited I did mention how there’s nothing illegal with what those people are doing and it’s simply an unfortunate reality of our era. -I’m aware that a lot of these retailers now have online sites which sell to foreigners and agree that’s a huge factor to consider as well. However, when it comes to Mercari and Amazon JP, I’m still largely getting the same deals I got about five years ago. Not all of them ship to foreigners and if you know what you’re looking for and search in Japanese, you can find decent prices which you mentioned in this video. Prices overall *are* lower than in the West. I guess it’s just a question of how much of these online resellers will be frequented by foreign buyers. -In the end though, I do agree with your overall point that no one is entitled to these games and that this is just a reality of how capitalism works. I do consider myself a capitalist and have sold stuff when I needed money. But for the most part I try to buy these games because I’ll actually play them. I’m currently aiming for a complete Famicom Disk set and since it’s a system most don’t care about, it’s still within financial reason to collect for.
The scalping stuff is truly unfortunate. I think that might be among the largest factors here, because of the scale it happens on. I witnessed firsthand people in Tokyo stockpiling pokemon games just to sell them in the US. People like us who actually enjoy these games and want to play them vs people who seemingly just want to run their business at the expense of actual collectors. But there's a market for it, so I guess as you say: it's an unfortunate result of the world we live in now. Everyone's looking for the next big thing to get rich off of.
One of the big criticisms of capitalism is that companies, especially large corporations like video game publishers, create an excess amount of product. Wonder what the value of retro video games would be like if most of the popular titles weren't produced well into the millions, if not the tens of millions, of copies.
電電タウン totally sucks now also it was always a bit of a dirty area of Osaka but since the hoards of tourists arrived after covid it has become noticeably dirtier.
in every fun hobby here now. Had some beautiful stores sellign figures, games etc. Now the shelves are always picked clean by ppl on their phones live streaming or talking to their reseller bosses loudly on speakerphone. Really annoying when you see ppl just hovering up a bunch of stuff they have no idea about or care about to then meet up with others and dump it all into vans or suitcases.. It is a kind of cultural mining. I worked for an antiques shop and did markets etc.Would get chinese buyers who would have no care about the products just yeah yeah ill buy all these , to take back to resell in china. Its a part of Japanese history that will now never be a part of Japan ever again...
We have junk stores here in south america filled with all the cheap japanese games, the thing is that the games are completely in japanese and mostly unplayable yet they expect to charge triple of the price they bought ir for 😂
They aregue they're "rare" but they really aren't on this day and age. Unless you live in Brazil, then most things are both rare and expensive anyways.
I went to Japan for the first time in 2008 and it really was different. No smartphone, I remember having to bring lots of printed maps with the places I wanted to go to, specially out of Tokyo and Osaka ...
ppl can call me an old hag but i miss that era of mapping out like that and getting around without a device saving you and doing all the heavy lifting.
Was in Tokyo a couple months ago and still able to find plenty of great deals on games if you know where to poke around. I got a Sega Saturn in box for about $70. When I got back to my rental apartment and inspected it further, I don't think this Saturn was ever used because the cables, manual and controller seemed to be in factory sealed bags. Maybe they were resealed by the store but the console itself had not one mark or any sign of ever being used. The retro gaming community itself has grown exponentially in the last decade, obviously. Nobody will say that prices haven't increased. Everything has increased in price. People are a lot more online than they were 10-15 years ago and there have been millions of videos on game play, game reviews, game breakdowns and more of games we might not have known about back in the 90s and early 00s. Also what needs to be said is that the retro game collector in 2024 is a lot different than in the 2000s or 2010s. People aren't collecting just to play cool games anymore. They want the complete in box, pristine copy and they want entire sets of games for specific consoles. Never before has it been such a huge thing to "collect" for some sort of book shelf, game room or video tour so people can show off their collections. The more people buy to collect and less to play, the fewer copies of games will remain in stores or online.
In 30 years time people won’t be collecting video games anyway, it’s a nostalgia driven fad which is being marketed as an “investment” platform. Younger gen’s just care about social media and becoming famous, weird world we live in now
Just like the toys and comic books that boomers grew up with are worthless now too right? Lol. I'm glad I don't collect for value, which is why I don't see any reason to collect full sets of games for certain consoles. No way there are even half the games on a console that would be remotely interesting to play. Unless it's a Neo Geo AES.
@@CrawlingPanther so you’ve got Star Wars figures and marvel/DC comics. A very select few are worth anything, same as baseball cards etc. but those franchises they are tied too are massive. Star Wars is still going but the superhero phase is starting to phase out shown by interest in box office numbers (there’s only so many times people can watch the same movie over and over again). It’s best to just collect for personal and not value, there’s hundreds of thousands of copies of certain games which have ridiculous prices which I’ll never understand.
I visited Japan in 2006 as a game collector, and I was even less in the know than some friends of mine. So the idea that the only foreigners visiting game shops before 2008 were game magazine writers is quite silly. Also, social media back then came in the form of message forums, so if you weren't involved in those, you missed out on an entire scene that was quite mature before youtube, instagram, facebook and all other ways people share collecting info today.
My first trip to Japan was 2009 and boy do I remember it being different, like you say. Boxed copies of Pokemon games for less than 500 yen, in Akihabara of all places. Only people who really cared about games tended to wander into these stores. These days, I see people going in asking store clerks questions like "which system is 007 on" and I don't even know if they know what they're looking for.
This video is spot on. I remember being in Tokyo in the early 2010s and freaking out when I saw a sealed copy of Castlevania Sotn selling for almost nothing. I still have my sealed copy today. I'm regretting not picking up more.
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It’s in Japanese….. You can buy sealed copies of sotn for cheap in turkish if the game is all that matters to you.
With the recent HA Tokyo & CGC offices opening in Japan, one scenario is that the Japanese games being exported to America may start being imported back into Japan as sealed / unopened collecting gains some steam. It will be interesting to see if sealed/unopened collecting starts showing up in pockets across Japan over the next few years.
I saw a video on TH-cam a couple of weeks ago, they said that many Japanese store owners has moved their retro inventory from their shelves by selling it mainly online instead. The reason could be that people in western countries are willing to pay more for their games. It could also be a indicator for the spike in price when it comes to Japanese retro video games lately. Of course there could be multiple other factors to why there are less games than earlier as well.
you're talking about how there were more games back then and they were way cheaper. in 2008 these snes and n64 games were like 10-20 years old. that today is like Wii and Wii U. those games can be found everywhere and are dirt cheap. the older these things get the harder they are to find, the more break, the more people become "nostalgic"
As someone who is now trying to rebuild their Genesis / Mega Drive collection, I want to go back in time and kick the me that was living in Japan in 2002 in the butt and tell her to take advantage of all of those Mega Drive games that were collecting dust on store shelves for such cheap prices. It makes me want to cry when thinking about how much I could have bought for so little.
That's how I feel about all the people who sold their gamecubes when the Wii came out. Should have just got a Gameboy player and started buying for the long haul.
It's more about how Japan is experiencing mass tourism. I think this is a consequence of that. Btw last year I found good stuff in Hiroshima, Kobe etc. I went to Friends in Tokyo as well and it was very empty.
I see so many games, even from PAL regions too being bought up by americans who take them home and upsell them on eBay for thousands of dollars. I met one of them who I recognised because I watched his channel a lot, he bought a ton of retro games from our local "Once Was New" for Dreamcast, Saturn and Nintendo 64, none of which cost more than £60, yet he resold them on eBay for around $500 dollars a piece. That's over 10x profit on each one,= for him and less games for us. The store, seeing the new "demand" raised prices after, so now I the copy of Shenmue 2 I wanted to pick up for £25 is now £65 and the rest are all more expensive too. The guy said "american resellers are ruining retro gaming in the US, upselling their collections and leaving less for us" yet he did the exact same thing to us. Honestly, resellers, especially american resellers, suck for retro gamers. I've been a Dreamcast gamer since day 1 and want to pad out the collection of games I want to play but couldn't get at the time, and now I have to wait until prices go down or these clowns stop hogging them all up to make money.
One thing i must say is that Japanese take care of their games alot better than here. Disc games here in US are usually scratched up or in white sleeves, or half broken disc cases with missing manuals in retro stores.
The same goes for when American Trabsformers collectors found out a out the various Japanese Transformers G1 toys during the mid 90s and 2000s. They used to be cheap until all the Americans buying them out.
That's just the way it goes. The Japanese bought up all of the mint vinyl records from the west when their economy was booming back in the 70's and 80's.
I use Zen. It is harder to find good deals now. A lot more Japanese sellers are on eBay now too. One of the only ways to get a good deal is because of the exchange rate.
I use Buyee. How is Zen with consolidation? I buy some CE's for newer consoles as they are NOT unreasonably priced. Granted the exchange rate is GREAT but I think for a few people the supply could be alleviated if ALL recent console games just HAD Japanese text options. Some of us are buying these games because we WANT to play them in Japanese and have it help us learn Japanese.
I knew before the pandemic that this would happen. A friend at the time who constantly traveled to Japan told me Japan was running low on games and Laserdiscs. They also told me they noticed a few shops overcharging certain games to foreign tourists because they knew they'll never see the games again. The gaijin tax is real. Me personally, I invested in EverDrives and ODEs because I don't have the space anymore for games. Nowadays I'm focused on buying console systems. Now they are tricky to find even in beat up, junky, needs to be repaired condition (Hello PC Engine/TurboGrafx).
Personal experience here. I bought mech warrior 2 for sega saturn, in japan, sealed for seven dollars. This was 6 years ago. I tried again from the same seller, and he now wanted 100. I blame youtube.
I was a senior in high school of 2011. In 2009, I got my first job working minimum wage and was able to finally buy games I've always wanted to play as a kid but couldn't. Around this time, the PS3/Wii/Xbox360 was very dominant but my family and I couldn't afford one. The 2008 crash hit us hard for a long time. So I just stuck to my R4 on the 3DS, GBA, PS1, PS2 games. TH-cam had only been around for a few years. I lived a hustle lifestyle always had an ebay account. Then found out about retro games and got hooked. A decade later at the end of the 2010s, my daily thrifting became empty handed because many places caught up to how valuable retro games were and I couldn't ever find dollar deals as I once did before 2018. It's only getting worse.
in zone kyoto that shoop for game there are? i`m whatching for more game like wii. it will be my first time in Japan and i will stay in Kyoto and maybe some time in Osaka
I remember when you could buy a box of gbasp consoles and two boxes of Japanese gba games new in box or in box at bookoff for less than ¥1000. Back then you could get gba games for ¥100 each.
I was in Japan over the summer and its basically impossible to find a good deal in big cities. When I was in Tokyo all the game stores were basically charging market value for everything sometimes over in places like super potato. Went to a book off in Yokosuka and found they were pricing things pretty well though, got some games I was looking for at a pretty cheap price. Book off will always be my favorite!
Guys you're being overly dramatic. It's simple demand and supply. Japanese store owners are more than happy to sell their games at higher prices. People buying them are happy or they wouldn't buy in the first place. People already owning games are happy because prices are rising. The only people complaining are the ones feeling left out because they've been waiting for YEARS instead of, you know, buying the games they care about NOW. Also don't worry about japanese people complaining, I'm more than sure they're just a loud minority. Japan is overflooded with old games, almost no one cares about them that much. Take the subway in Tokyo and you'll struggle to even see a Nintendo Switch. The japanese mostly care about phones, food, vacations etc. just like everyone else. No one cares about random famicom carts rising up in prices in stores.
All great points, a little something to add on. As you know, Japan has had no inflation for the past decades while the west has. Combine that with a weakening yen creates a golden opportunity for retro game exports. Japanese retro games act as a demand overflow for western games, there is only so much supply to go around. What it all boils down to is that the American consumer has high purchasing power abroad at the moment, who knows how long this dollar dominance will last for but until then, demand will continue to outpace supply.
It happened in rural Japan too. Was in December last year visiting my partners family in Kagawa. Went to a bunch of retro stores in Takamatsu and surrounding towns. It was pretty hard to find anything good. Was specifically looking for gameboy, 3DS stuff, but it was all not that very cheap, and the selection was limited. Famicom games were cheap, so there is that. But most things were not. Went to Osaka, it was pricier, but selection was better. I don’t recommend going on a rural adventure for retro game shopping. Just go for regular sites and be happy even if you cant find a retro game.
The issue is that in the west retro game prices have gotten ridiculous, only speculators are buying them as an investment and people who actually want to play them will just emulate it on an Everdrive or a PC. But Japanese retro game prices are affordable if you actually want to play them and since outside of RPGs you don't really need text for older games people are just buying the Japanese version. The issue is now some speculators are going to notice this and will buy up these games too to jack up the price.
Price on physical games are harder to get, I’m semi emulating older stuff like pre PS360 era games since most tvs don’t support those models and look hideous without upping the rendering on HDTV. For example Dynasty Warriors Gundam reborn cost $200 if you want English version but Japanese version of the game I could get it for $13 include shipping. Also picked up almost new 2DS XL Japan model since it was not over priced like any other region.
Being able to get in Japan as a student before they opened the borders properly was bliss. I scooped up soooo much stuff it was crazy. My coolest thing being big box Persona 1 for PC. By the time I finished my year abroad I had to ship 6 boxes home to the UK lol
People were already collecting in the early 2000s it was an outgrowth of the import scene, certain PS1 games were already priced higher than they retailed for, Valkyrie Profile for instance.
Was in Tokyo recently and yes there are less rarities around but no there is no crisis. I cannot speak to many years past but there were plenty of gems available to buy.
I signed up for ebay back in 1997, my ebay account is 27 years old. Anyway, games were cheap. Unopened copies of Panzer Dragoon Saga were going for $100 in 2001. I was getting 3do games for $7, NeoGeo for $40. Also you had several systems being phased out at this time so a lot of new games and systems were marked down to crazy prices. Dreamcast were $50 when it was discontinued. The Sega Nomad was $50, and the Game gear. I never could afford new systems, but it paid of in the end.
The only people who truly don't deserve this games are the speculators driving up the price like what happened in the US. If you're buying one copy for collector purposes its fine.
Well, simply youtubers have ruined it with their hidden gem lists, Japan exclusives. Most of the games won't get played at least the lack of English protects most of the RPGs. After covid restrictions lifted here i saw huge bare patches on the shelves, and prices were markedly up. Going to game stores in the traditional electronic town area of Osaka now sucks, prices are up and always full of large amounts of noisy tourists. I have all the snes saturn dreamcast stuff i will ever need already but for modern used games its just easier and less annoying to use auction sites or go to bookoff in a normal town tourists will never go to. At least those places haven't been pilaged by western collectors.
At least none of them give a crap about Japanese Drama's thankfully. Even before CV a few unknown niche items got more expensive than I would like. But those were NOT on any hidden gem lists.
@@XVa-uj8m The annoyingthing is that half are just taking back something that looks unique in language they cant understand where it will sit in their collection unplayed forever or people taking back loads to put on ebay at ridiculous prices. They are not making any new nes, snes saturn, games so people need to understand there will be a time when the supply runs out.
@@cocktailzombie Yeah I hate the idea of things being unplayed. Games aren't paintings. I am worried now a particular SFC RPG that is weird will get more expensive because of these idiots. I will grant you I bought some Saturn stuff back in the day on a whim because I saw the cover and was curious but that was NEVER with the intention I would never play it..."Waachenroder" comes to mind. Come to find out I bought a Strategy RPG that apparently has an AWESOME story!!!! :D I want to buy Zwei because the American market version is too expensive. I have been wanting to play that for a while as everyone raves about it. I am surprised "Tenerezza" costs as much for the OG XBox as it does though. There is a remake of a famous RPG on the 360 in Japan and that is more expensive but I think that is coming from the Japanese NOT Americans. For games like "Gunman's Proof" and others I hold no illusions of getting an affordable copy so I won't bother. I will just use an Everdrive. A few I actually bought a digital copy though from Japanese VCS, including the Nintendo Power cartridges.
@@XVa-uj8m i wouldn't worry about any new SFC RPG bring discovered there are 3 i can think of but they are already over $150 fully boxed. Though i do still find it funny i can go into any store here and find a boxed copy of chrono trigger for less than $5 thank god it was only released in Japanese here.
On the contrary, I think many people went to Japan and some even went there to work and it peaked around 2006-2008. However, 99.99% of those people were young and more into clubbing or whatever, not into looking out for games. I see the exact same thing in Korea right now, most young expats here aren't into game collecting period.
I been collecting since i been gaming since i was 3 in 1991 and have kept most of my games, and collected alot of cheap games and kept them. Around 2008, i started collecting alot until 2020 and then the prices started going crazy buy then and now i have flash carts, and odes and not buy any games unless it's one i really want 😢
I do agree. I am still buying my games in complete and most of the time mint condition in my couch via my proxy for waaaaay cheaper than their PAL equivalent. Also most of the time at the same price of their original retail or still cheaper. Its a no brainer. What I struggle with is that the supply is now kinda drying up on Mercari and YA as well, for GBA and SFC I'll have to check every few days for a few weeks to find something satisfying. But its still cheaper, and PAL games are in disgusting conditions compared to what how they take care of their items.
I just recently had my car stolen and I had a revelation about how easy everything else I have could be stolen as well. I just started getting some of my games together and put them up on EBay. I’m ready to sell just about all of my games. It’s a great feeling to realize what is more important.
In the last 2 years, I watched at least a dozen American TH-camrs all going to Japan for their "game hunting" videos, which became almost suspiscious after a while. Also, the rise of the easy export services plays a role. The upside is more people get to play games in Japanese..!
I think there are some decent points here but also some broad generalization going on here too. Sure a game going up $10-20 more bucks is no big deal but it's when someone or a group of people buy up these goods to resell and then you're seeing cheap titles go up $40-100 or even more than that you'll begin to see a major problem. And for some games it is getting to that point. I can only imagine what prices will jump to in the reseller markets outside of Japan because of this. It will only get worse but I doubt it will be as bad as the current game market in the US necessarily.
Japanese dont collect retro games nor manga because theyre a dime a dozen in their country or at least were. They care about whatever game or show is trending and because they have small homes, they collect way less than North Americans do
Yeah but with some stuff like the Switch they are getting physical copies of some games most other places are only getting digital so here and there there is incentive to get newer product. I want to say Lost Sphear may have only got a physical release in the EU and Japan while I am pretty sure Oninaki and I Am Setsuna ONLY got a physical release in Japan. The Romancing SaGa remakes did too. Another Code Recollection MAY have gotten a small print run elsewhere. Oh and the first Monster Hunter Stories I THINK is only getting a physical copy for Japan for that print run. For that Anothere example is most of the Atlus games only have Japanese text options for the Japanese versions while EnixSquare and Nintendo have pretty decent offerings there.
Overall a great observation of the market! (source: been observing it myself since 2010ish and going to Japan multiple times) I need to make one note though: I know enthusiasts that have been touring to Japan to buy games since the 90s, so there being no tourists that came for those stores is definitely not true. It’s just that video gaming was more niche back then overall and Japanese games were a niche within that niche among gamers from the west to begin with. You could also buy Japanese games online, from both online stores and eBay - I remember my first online imports happening back in 2008.
I'm going 2024 to Japan for 3rd time. 😂. First time was 2018. I was getting japanese imports in 1994 from London. The Japanese shops I went to are largely filled with the same titles. I go there with a wanted list and find nothing. I actually spent most money at mandarake on 2 titles. Friends was half empty last year. Let's also not forget the currency exchange is ridiculous now the £ is scraping Y200.
Another thing to point out as well is that it’s JAPANESE sellers and stores that are the ones exporting their products en masse. TH-camrs , tourism,and clout collectors are merely symptoms that are only enabled because Japanese resellers want foreigner’s money. It’s very easy to blame the baka gaijin for problem that involves cutural clashes between japan and the rest of the world but this is a problem created sort of by japan itself. I’m not defending the wave of “I went to super potato and maxed out a $10000 credit card” types though. Too many people are only getting into this hobby for the wrong reasons. Not everyone is like that though and it’s a shame that new people with a legitimate interest are being punished for it.
You aren't highlighting why it is so high.. its so high is because everyone has cell phones now and can research information if you go shopping at goodwill and any other place 2nd hand store that is here in the US everyone is whipping out their phone to price things because they are using ebay, etsy or amazon to sell stuf.. you see this with people doing this with buying yard sales too many people who have phones and using phones to research prices. that's the reason these items are disappearing also because places like book off are coming more state side they are exporting those out of the country they just opened a book off in Mesa AZ2 months ago. instead of having the tourist looking in japan the games are ending up in book off second hand stores.
Not just in Japan. Speaking from the UK, prices are getting ridiculous in CeX and eBay which are now pretty much the only places to buy them and the collectors are driving prices up to the point where there are few games to buy and the cost is out of reach for the average person. I had to stop collecting Sega Saturn games because the cost was getting ridiculous and having other adult responsibilities, it's now out of reach. And as there is no appetite to re-release those Saturn games so you now only have two options if you don't have the money - go without or go on the Jolly Roger.
this is why I'm so Done with Buying Retro and just going the Emulation and Homebrewing as this just killed my fav. hobby and gaming but hey I gotten into Comics but it just seems like being Low-income person your shit out luck.
For me, i only started caring as much about the older games because i wasnt feeling satisfied with modern games. Older games are often just more fun and more appealing to me. I often just prefer japanese games as well so ive been getting those older games. Once social media came out and the games were just more "pure" in japan for how they were, i cared more about them. So what partly blame is localizers, censorship, and translaters, regional exclusives, and often changes that altered the game made me interested in the original version, character models and text, etc. Same with japanese getting exlcusive versions like pokemon crystal that had unique looks and unique mew ds. I dont care for a 5 screw variant of a nes but i do want a full complete box edition of earthbound. i collect my FAVORITE games and some others i like because of the collector items. I love my lunar 2 collectors edition because of the extra stuff it has. One thing I've noticed since I started collecting 10 years ago is that even younger generations have been interested in the older games and collecting them since they never got to see them brand new like we possibly did and now that they are rare, they are more interested.
Since the rpgs in Japan is the genre of choice there (like fps shooters are in america) there pretty cheap. Also the reason why rpgs in Japan are pretty cheap still is bc 99% of westerners cannot read nor speak Japanese. I think this is why your seeing universal games like smhups, action,& fighting games with very little Japanese fly off the shelves with insane prices.
Game collecting was definitely already happening in the late 90s to early 00s. For example, on the Digital Press forum. It’s not accurate to say no one cared. Lots of people collected, just not at the extreme mass social media scale that happened later. Deals were more plentiful back then for sure, but it’s an exaggeration to say that you could easily find eg Super Mario RPG for $3-4 at the flea market. That was always a desirable game. $20 was not an absurdly high price for it, that would have been an average or even slightly low price. Source: I was there 😋
I usually buy Japanese games from Japan via Ebay, Need to get Cocoron for my Nes soon before it goes up in price haha, so yeah I could see why Ebay is part of the issue for Japanese collectors, I have seen how people from different parts of the world keep buying Rockman and Akumaju for the Snes and Nes, and lots of Saturn/PC Engine and PlayStation games from Japan, soon all their games will be in foreign lands.
The real reason is that no one wants to work, yet do what they love. So they all took their covid checks and bought everything up, to resell. Also new games are full of politics, and censorship. Old games are not. I havent bought a new game in years. I was born in 84. I have been collecting since the beginning.
When I was in Tokyo last Summer all the big retro stores were stuffed full of rare and interesting stuff. Even in Super Potato there was a YM-901 for $600, and hundreds of rare consoles and games. People say the prices have gone up, but great value was there to be found on lots of rare titles. Generally much cheaper than we sell stuff for. I'm the world's first Retrogamer by the way, selling since 1995 😆
A lot has to do with the youtubers such as yourself promoting these cheap prices places so foreigners go over to buy up all the stock so its not surprising 2nd hand shops will raise prices as their stock dwindles.
smart phones around 2011 were still growing and not omnipresent, but sure they changed everything in video game accesibility, vbut the iPad was patient zero, during 2011... not before that , impossible technically. Not yet intelligent phones mate
As a Mexican, I can feel the pain of having dollar flipping tourists breaking the local economy, while they’re smiling, laughing, taking our culture as if it was an amusement park. It’s painful, and to us, it’s sickening.
Super Potato was never cheap and prices were always higher than in other stores. They are focused more on having a wide catalogue with harder to find pieces (at higher prices ofc)
Hello, I’m Oliver Jia, the “Japanese resident” mentioned in that Time Extension piece. Appreciate your thoughts. Just a few points of my own.
-I’m not Japanese. I’m an American living here like you. I think the author of that piece was framing me as a “resident who lives in Japan” so the wording in the headline is a bit weird, but whatever.
-I got in touch with the author and I’ll be writing my own piece on this topic which will be a bit more nuanced. I agree with many of your points here and was glad to see you confirm my other observations like prices being very reasonable in the early months of the pandemic. It was pretty much the opposite overseas, so I’ll be highlighting that difference.
-I was specifically talking about that particular Surugaya in Kyoto for the most part, but I also noticed similar things when I visited Den Den Town in Osaka a few weeks ago. I mentioned the tourists because as someone who frequented that Surugaya regularly, I’ve seen with my own eyes a mass increase of foreign visitors and people clearing entire shelves. A lot of them are going to be reselling these games overseas and I’m not a fan of scalping, but in my tweets which the article cited I did mention how there’s nothing illegal with what those people are doing and it’s simply an unfortunate reality of our era.
-I’m aware that a lot of these retailers now have online sites which sell to foreigners and agree that’s a huge factor to consider as well. However, when it comes to Mercari and Amazon JP, I’m still largely getting the same deals I got about five years ago. Not all of them ship to foreigners and if you know what you’re looking for and search in Japanese, you can find decent prices which you mentioned in this video. Prices overall *are* lower than in the West. I guess it’s just a question of how much of these online resellers will be frequented by foreign buyers.
-In the end though, I do agree with your overall point that no one is entitled to these games and that this is just a reality of how capitalism works. I do consider myself a capitalist and have sold stuff when I needed money. But for the most part I try to buy these games because I’ll actually play them. I’m currently aiming for a complete Famicom Disk set and since it’s a system most don’t care about, it’s still within financial reason to collect for.
The scalping stuff is truly unfortunate. I think that might be among the largest factors here, because of the scale it happens on. I witnessed firsthand people in Tokyo stockpiling pokemon games just to sell them in the US.
People like us who actually enjoy these games and want to play them vs people who seemingly just want to run their business at the expense of actual collectors.
But there's a market for it, so I guess as you say: it's an unfortunate result of the world we live in now. Everyone's looking for the next big thing to get rich off of.
One of the big criticisms of capitalism is that companies, especially large corporations like video game publishers, create an excess amount of product. Wonder what the value of retro video games would be like if most of the popular titles weren't produced well into the millions, if not the tens of millions, of copies.
電電タウン totally sucks now also it was always a bit of a dirty area of Osaka but since the hoards of tourists arrived after covid it has become noticeably dirtier.
A lot of people bought the Japanese video games from Japan. They’re disappearing and sold out.
"I do consider myself a capitalist" lol
its the fucking resellers
in every fun hobby here now. Had some beautiful stores sellign figures, games etc. Now the shelves are always picked clean by ppl on their phones live streaming or talking to their reseller bosses loudly on speakerphone. Really annoying when you see ppl just hovering up a bunch of stuff they have no idea about or care about to then meet up with others and dump it all into vans or suitcases.. It is a kind of cultural mining. I worked for an antiques shop and did markets etc.Would get chinese buyers who would have no care about the products just yeah yeah ill buy all these , to take back to resell in china. Its a part of Japanese history that will now never be a part of Japan ever again...
@@Naruga thank you for the anecdote friend
We have junk stores here in south america filled with all the cheap japanese games, the thing is that the games are completely in japanese and mostly unplayable yet they expect to charge triple of the price they bought ir for 😂
They aregue they're "rare" but they really aren't on this day and age. Unless you live in Brazil, then most things are both rare and expensive anyways.
What America owner does they're bought cheap stuff over se as. Hey u pay triple
I went to Japan for the first time in 2008 and it really was different. No smartphone, I remember having to bring lots of printed maps with the places I wanted to go to, specially out of Tokyo and Osaka ...
ppl can call me an old hag but i miss that era of mapping out like that and getting around without a device saving you and doing all the heavy lifting.
@@Naruga it certainly led to some very nice discoveries and happy accidents
Gps making people dum@@Naruga
Was in Tokyo a couple months ago and still able to find plenty of great deals on games if you know where to poke around. I got a Sega Saturn in box for about $70. When I got back to my rental apartment and inspected it further, I don't think this Saturn was ever used because the cables, manual and controller seemed to be in factory sealed bags. Maybe they were resealed by the store but the console itself had not one mark or any sign of ever being used.
The retro gaming community itself has grown exponentially in the last decade, obviously. Nobody will say that prices haven't increased. Everything has increased in price. People are a lot more online than they were 10-15 years ago and there have been millions of videos on game play, game reviews, game breakdowns and more of games we might not have known about back in the 90s and early 00s.
Also what needs to be said is that the retro game collector in 2024 is a lot different than in the 2000s or 2010s. People aren't collecting just to play cool games anymore. They want the complete in box, pristine copy and they want entire sets of games for specific consoles. Never before has it been such a huge thing to "collect" for some sort of book shelf, game room or video tour so people can show off their collections. The more people buy to collect and less to play, the fewer copies of games will remain in stores or online.
In 30 years from now, today’s games will be worthless because most games are incomplete
In 30 years time people won’t be collecting video games anyway, it’s a nostalgia driven fad which is being marketed as an “investment” platform.
Younger gen’s just care about social media and becoming famous, weird world we live in now
@@retropursuit992 and 99.99% of zoomers and alphas won’t be successful at all but remained in mediocrity
Just like the toys and comic books that boomers grew up with are worthless now too right? Lol. I'm glad I don't collect for value, which is why I don't see any reason to collect full sets of games for certain consoles. No way there are even half the games on a console that would be remotely interesting to play. Unless it's a Neo Geo AES.
@@CrawlingPanther so you’ve got Star Wars figures and marvel/DC comics.
A very select few are worth anything, same as baseball cards etc. but those franchises they are tied too are massive.
Star Wars is still going but the superhero phase is starting to phase out shown by interest in box office numbers (there’s only so many times people can watch the same movie over and over again).
It’s best to just collect for personal and not value, there’s hundreds of thousands of copies of certain games which have ridiculous prices which I’ll never understand.
I visited Japan in 2006 as a game collector, and I was even less in the know than some friends of mine. So the idea that the only foreigners visiting game shops before 2008 were game magazine writers is quite silly.
Also, social media back then came in the form of message forums, so if you weren't involved in those, you missed out on an entire scene that was quite mature before youtube, instagram, facebook and all other ways people share collecting info today.
For sure, when I was 19 in the early 2000's my friend and I scoped out Akihabara, bought a used DS, some gamecube accessories, and some GBA games.
Must have been 2005
My first trip to Japan was 2009 and boy do I remember it being different, like you say.
Boxed copies of Pokemon games for less than 500 yen, in Akihabara of all places. Only people who really cared about games tended to wander into these stores. These days, I see people going in asking store clerks questions like "which system is 007 on" and I don't even know if they know what they're looking for.
Goldeneye 007 n64 game
I remember 1000 Yen PC Engines stacked up high in the Super Potato.
This is so nostalgic it almost makes me sad.
This video is spot on. I remember being in Tokyo in the early 2010s and freaking out when I saw a sealed copy of Castlevania Sotn selling for almost nothing. I still have my sealed copy today. I'm regretting not picking up more.
It’s in Japanese…..
You can buy sealed copies of sotn for cheap in turkish if the game is all that matters to you.
What's the problem with it being in Japanese?
Great talk here, J! Lets see what the future holds. But one thing is for sure, the limit of retro games in Japan is real.
I blame the Italian scalpers 😂
I’ve been noticing months ago alot of Japanese games appearing in USA eBay sales from games were is required to know Japanese to games that don’t.
Its funny because Americans be so happy to buy a Japanese rpg game and don't know one word in Japanese 🤣
With the recent HA Tokyo & CGC offices opening in Japan, one scenario is that the Japanese games being exported to America may start being imported back into Japan as sealed / unopened collecting gains some steam.
It will be interesting to see if sealed/unopened collecting starts showing up in pockets across Japan over the next few years.
I saw a video on TH-cam a couple of weeks ago, they said that many Japanese store owners has moved their retro inventory from their shelves by selling it mainly online instead. The reason could be that people in western countries are willing to pay more for their games. It could also be a indicator for the spike in price when it comes to Japanese retro video games lately. Of course there could be multiple other factors to why there are less games than earlier as well.
you're talking about how there were more games back then and they were way cheaper. in 2008 these snes and n64 games were like 10-20 years old. that today is like Wii and Wii U. those games can be found everywhere and are dirt cheap. the older these things get the harder they are to find, the more break, the more people become "nostalgic"
As someone who is now trying to rebuild their Genesis / Mega Drive collection, I want to go back in time and kick the me that was living in Japan in 2002 in the butt and tell her to take advantage of all of those Mega Drive games that were collecting dust on store shelves for such cheap prices. It makes me want to cry when thinking about how much I could have bought for so little.
That's how I feel about all the people who sold their gamecubes when the Wii came out. Should have just got a Gameboy player and started buying for the long haul.
It's more about how Japan is experiencing mass tourism. I think this is a consequence of that. Btw last year I found good stuff in Hiroshima, Kobe etc. I went to Friends in Tokyo as well and it was very empty.
I see so many games, even from PAL regions too being bought up by americans who take them home and upsell them on eBay for thousands of dollars.
I met one of them who I recognised because I watched his channel a lot, he bought a ton of retro games from our local "Once Was New" for Dreamcast, Saturn and Nintendo 64, none of which cost more than £60, yet he resold them on eBay for around $500 dollars a piece. That's over 10x profit on each one,= for him and less games for us.
The store, seeing the new "demand" raised prices after, so now I the copy of Shenmue 2 I wanted to pick up for £25 is now £65 and the rest are all more expensive too.
The guy said "american resellers are ruining retro gaming in the US, upselling their collections and leaving less for us" yet he did the exact same thing to us.
Honestly, resellers, especially american resellers, suck for retro gamers. I've been a Dreamcast gamer since day 1 and want to pad out the collection of games I want to play but couldn't get at the time, and now I have to wait until prices go down or these clowns stop hogging them all up to make money.
One thing i must say is that Japanese take care of their games alot better than here.
Disc games here in US are usually scratched up or in white sleeves, or half broken disc cases with missing manuals in retro stores.
Interestingly enough, the exact opposite is true when it comes to sports cars.
I agree.i got used games from people in Facebook marketing I got scratches.thats why I got disk cleaner machines.
People finger prints them.i don't
4:47 fun fact, The Wii U is now just as old as the copy of Super Mario RPG you bought back in 2008.
The same goes for when American Trabsformers collectors found out a out the various Japanese Transformers G1 toys during the mid 90s and 2000s. They used to be cheap until all the Americans buying them out.
That's just the way it goes. The Japanese bought up all of the mint vinyl records from the west when their economy was booming back in the 70's and 80's.
I use Zen. It is harder to find good deals now. A lot more Japanese sellers are on eBay now too. One of the only ways to get a good deal is because of the exchange rate.
There is a lot of Jp games on on USA eBay more than usual managed to get a lot of high dollar Sega Saturn games for cheap
I use Buyee. How is Zen with consolidation? I buy some CE's for newer consoles as they are NOT unreasonably priced. Granted the exchange rate is GREAT but I think for a few people the supply could be alleviated if ALL recent console games just HAD Japanese text options. Some of us are buying these games because we WANT to play them in Japanese and have it help us learn Japanese.
I knew before the pandemic that this would happen. A friend at the time who constantly traveled to Japan told me Japan was running low on games and Laserdiscs. They also told me they noticed a few shops overcharging certain games to foreign tourists because they knew they'll never see the games again. The gaijin tax is real. Me personally, I invested in EverDrives and ODEs because I don't have the space anymore for games. Nowadays I'm focused on buying console systems. Now they are tricky to find even in beat up, junky, needs to be repaired condition (Hello PC Engine/TurboGrafx).
I bought some things early, before all this excitement thankfully.
Personal experience here. I bought mech warrior 2 for sega saturn, in japan, sealed for seven dollars. This was 6 years ago. I tried again from the same seller, and he now wanted 100. I blame youtube.
I collect Godzilla and old Japanese toys, and it's exactly the same, there's not much left in the shops, it's mostly all moved online.
I was a senior in high school of 2011. In 2009, I got my first job working minimum wage and was able to finally buy games I've always wanted to play as a kid but couldn't. Around this time, the PS3/Wii/Xbox360 was very dominant but my family and I couldn't afford one. The 2008 crash hit us hard for a long time. So I just stuck to my R4 on the 3DS, GBA, PS1, PS2 games. TH-cam had only been around for a few years.
I lived a hustle lifestyle always had an ebay account. Then found out about retro games and got hooked.
A decade later at the end of the 2010s, my daily thrifting became empty handed because many places caught up to how valuable retro games were and I couldn't ever find dollar deals as I once did before 2018. It's only getting worse.
in zone kyoto that shoop for game there are? i`m whatching for more game like wii. it will be my first time in Japan and i will stay in Kyoto and maybe some time in Osaka
I remember when you could buy a box of gbasp consoles and two boxes of Japanese gba games new in box or in box at bookoff for less than ¥1000. Back then you could get gba games for ¥100 each.
I was in Japan over the summer and its basically impossible to find a good deal in big cities. When I was in Tokyo all the game stores were basically charging market value for everything sometimes over in places like super potato. Went to a book off in Yokosuka and found they were pricing things pretty well though, got some games I was looking for at a pretty cheap price. Book off will always be my favorite!
Guys you're being overly dramatic. It's simple demand and supply. Japanese store owners are more than happy to sell their games at higher prices. People buying them are happy or they wouldn't buy in the first place. People already owning games are happy because prices are rising. The only people complaining are the ones feeling left out because they've been waiting for YEARS instead of, you know, buying the games they care about NOW.
Also don't worry about japanese people complaining, I'm more than sure they're just a loud minority. Japan is overflooded with old games, almost no one cares about them that much. Take the subway in Tokyo and you'll struggle to even see a Nintendo Switch. The japanese mostly care about phones, food, vacations etc. just like everyone else. No one cares about random famicom carts rising up in prices in stores.
All great points, a little something to add on. As you know, Japan has had no inflation for the past decades while the west has. Combine that with a weakening yen creates a golden opportunity for retro game exports. Japanese retro games act as a demand overflow for western games, there is only so much supply to go around. What it all boils down to is that the American consumer has high purchasing power abroad at the moment, who knows how long this dollar dominance will last for but until then, demand will continue to outpace supply.
It happened in rural Japan too. Was in December last year visiting my partners family in Kagawa. Went to a bunch of retro stores in Takamatsu and surrounding towns. It was pretty hard to find anything good. Was specifically looking for gameboy, 3DS stuff, but it was all not that very cheap, and the selection was limited. Famicom games were cheap, so there is that. But most things were not. Went to Osaka, it was pricier, but selection was better. I don’t recommend going on a rural adventure for retro game shopping. Just go for regular sites and be happy even if you cant find a retro game.
The issue is that in the west retro game prices have gotten ridiculous, only speculators are buying them as an investment and people who actually want to play them will just emulate it on an Everdrive or a PC. But Japanese retro game prices are affordable if you actually want to play them and since outside of RPGs you don't really need text for older games people are just buying the Japanese version.
The issue is now some speculators are going to notice this and will buy up these games too to jack up the price.
Price on physical games are harder to get, I’m semi emulating older stuff like pre PS360 era games since most tvs don’t support those models and look hideous without upping the rendering on HDTV. For example Dynasty Warriors Gundam reborn cost $200 if you want English version but Japanese version of the game I could get it for $13 include shipping. Also picked up almost new 2DS XL Japan model since it was not over priced like any other region.
Being able to get in Japan as a student before they opened the borders properly was bliss. I scooped up soooo much stuff it was crazy. My coolest thing being big box Persona 1 for PC. By the time I finished my year abroad I had to ship 6 boxes home to the UK lol
People were already collecting in the early 2000s it was an outgrowth of the import scene, certain PS1 games were already priced higher than they retailed for, Valkyrie Profile for instance.
Timeline is spot on. I started collecting in 2000. US price jump was exactly around 2008-2009.
Was in Tokyo recently and yes there are less rarities around but no there is no crisis. I cannot speak to many years past but there were plenty of gems available to buy.
I signed up for ebay back in 1997, my ebay account is 27 years old. Anyway, games were cheap. Unopened copies of Panzer Dragoon Saga were going for $100 in 2001. I was getting 3do games for $7, NeoGeo for $40. Also you had several systems being phased out at this time so a lot of new games and systems were marked down to crazy prices. Dreamcast were $50 when it was discontinued. The Sega Nomad was $50, and the Game gear. I never could afford new systems, but it paid of in the end.
i remember in early 2000s grabbing so many snes games for 100 yen to 500 yen each with boxes etc. I wasnt thinking of collecting at that time sadly
The only people who truly don't deserve this games are the speculators driving up the price like what happened in the US. If you're buying one copy for collector purposes its fine.
Well, simply youtubers have ruined it with their hidden gem lists, Japan exclusives. Most of the games won't get played at least the lack of English protects most of the RPGs.
After covid restrictions lifted here i saw huge bare patches on the shelves, and prices were markedly up. Going to game stores in the traditional electronic town area of Osaka now sucks, prices are up and always full of large amounts of noisy tourists. I have all the snes saturn dreamcast stuff i will ever need already but for modern used games its just easier and less annoying to use auction sites or go to bookoff in a normal town tourists will never go to. At least those places haven't been pilaged by western collectors.
At least none of them give a crap about Japanese Drama's thankfully.
Even before CV a few unknown niche items got more expensive than I would like. But those were NOT on any hidden gem lists.
@@XVa-uj8m The annoyingthing is that half are just taking back something that looks unique in language they cant understand where it will sit in their collection unplayed forever or people taking back loads to put on ebay at ridiculous prices. They are not making any new nes, snes saturn, games so people need to understand there will be a time when the supply runs out.
@@cocktailzombie Yeah I hate the idea of things being unplayed. Games aren't paintings. I am worried now a particular SFC RPG that is weird will get more expensive because of these idiots.
I will grant you I bought some Saturn stuff back in the day on a whim because I saw the cover and was curious but that was NEVER with the intention I would never play it..."Waachenroder" comes to mind. Come to find out I bought a Strategy RPG that apparently has an AWESOME story!!!! :D
I want to buy Zwei because the American market version is too expensive. I have been wanting to play that for a while as everyone raves about it.
I am surprised "Tenerezza" costs as much for the OG XBox as it does though. There is a remake of a famous RPG on the 360 in Japan and that is more expensive but I think that is coming from the Japanese NOT Americans.
For games like "Gunman's Proof" and others I hold no illusions of getting an affordable copy so I won't bother. I will just use an Everdrive. A few I actually bought a digital copy though from Japanese VCS, including the Nintendo Power cartridges.
@@XVa-uj8m i wouldn't worry about any new SFC RPG bring discovered there are 3 i can think of but they are already over $150 fully boxed. Though i do still find it funny i can go into any store here and find a boxed copy of chrono trigger for less than $5 thank god it was only released in Japanese here.
On the contrary, I think many people went to Japan and some even went there to work and it peaked around 2006-2008. However, 99.99% of those people were young and more into clubbing or whatever, not into looking out for games. I see the exact same thing in Korea right now, most young expats here aren't into game collecting period.
I been collecting since i been gaming since i was 3 in 1991 and have kept most of my games, and collected alot of cheap games and kept them.
Around 2008, i started collecting alot until 2020 and then the prices started going crazy buy then and now i have flash carts, and odes and not buy any games unless it's one i really want 😢
The great thing is you can enjoy playing all these games for minimal outlay or free.
I do agree. I am still buying my games in complete and most of the time mint condition in my couch via my proxy for waaaaay cheaper than their PAL equivalent. Also most of the time at the same price of their original retail or still cheaper. Its a no brainer. What I struggle with is that the supply is now kinda drying up on Mercari and YA as well, for GBA and SFC I'll have to check every few days for a few weeks to find something satisfying. But its still cheaper, and PAL games are in disgusting conditions compared to what how they take care of their items.
I just recently had my car stolen and I had a revelation about how easy everything else I have could be stolen as well. I just started getting some of my games together and put them up on EBay. I’m ready to sell just about all of my games. It’s a great feeling to realize what is more important.
Its the depreciation of the yen first and foremost. That drives tourism, exports, etc.
In the last 2 years, I watched at least a dozen American TH-camrs all going to Japan for their "game hunting" videos, which became almost suspiscious after a while. Also, the rise of the easy export services plays a role. The upside is more people get to play games in Japanese..!
I think there are some decent points here but also some broad generalization going on here too. Sure a game going up $10-20 more bucks is no big deal but it's when someone or a group of people buy up these goods to resell and then you're seeing cheap titles go up $40-100 or even more than that you'll begin to see a major problem. And for some games it is getting to that point. I can only imagine what prices will jump to in the reseller markets outside of Japan because of this. It will only get worse but I doubt it will be as bad as the current game market in the US necessarily.
Japanese dont collect retro games nor manga because theyre a dime a dozen in their country or at least were. They care about whatever game or show is trending and because they have small homes, they collect way less than North Americans do
They don’t care about video games at all and make it cheap. Even Europeans don’t care either.
Yeah but with some stuff like the Switch they are getting physical copies of some games most other places are only getting digital so here and there there is incentive to get newer product.
I want to say Lost Sphear may have only got a physical release in the EU and Japan while I am pretty sure Oninaki and I Am Setsuna ONLY got a physical release in Japan. The Romancing SaGa remakes did too. Another Code Recollection MAY have gotten a small print run elsewhere. Oh and the first Monster Hunter Stories I THINK is only getting a physical copy for Japan for that print run. For that
Anothere example is most of the Atlus games only have Japanese text options for the Japanese versions while EnixSquare and Nintendo have pretty decent offerings there.
Overall a great observation of the market! (source: been observing it myself since 2010ish and going to Japan multiple times)
I need to make one note though: I know enthusiasts that have been touring to Japan to buy games since the 90s, so there being no tourists that came for those stores is definitely not true. It’s just that video gaming was more niche back then overall and Japanese games were a niche within that niche among gamers from the west to begin with. You could also buy Japanese games online, from both online stores and eBay - I remember my first online imports happening back in 2008.
I'm going 2024 to Japan for 3rd time. 😂. First time was 2018. I was getting japanese imports in 1994 from London. The Japanese shops I went to are largely filled with the same titles. I go there with a wanted list and find nothing. I actually spent most money at mandarake on 2 titles. Friends was half empty last year. Let's also not forget the currency exchange is ridiculous now the £ is scraping Y200.
Another thing to point out as well is that it’s JAPANESE sellers and stores that are the ones exporting their products en masse. TH-camrs , tourism,and clout collectors are merely symptoms that are only enabled because Japanese resellers want foreigner’s money. It’s very easy to blame the baka gaijin for problem that involves cutural clashes between japan and the rest of the world but this is a problem created sort of by japan itself.
I’m not defending the wave of “I went to super potato and maxed out a $10000 credit card” types though. Too many people are only getting into this hobby for the wrong reasons. Not everyone is like that though and it’s a shame that new people with a legitimate interest are being punished for it.
You aren't highlighting why it is so high.. its so high is because everyone has cell phones now and can research information if you go shopping at goodwill and any other place 2nd hand store that is here in the US everyone is whipping out their phone to price things because they are using ebay, etsy or amazon to sell stuf.. you see this with people doing this with buying yard sales too many people who have phones and using phones to research prices. that's the reason these items are disappearing also because places like book off are coming more state side they are exporting those out of the country they just opened a book off in Mesa AZ2 months ago. instead of having the tourist looking in japan the games are ending up in book off second hand stores.
Not just in Japan. Speaking from the UK, prices are getting ridiculous in CeX and eBay which are now pretty much the only places to buy them and the collectors are driving prices up to the point where there are few games to buy and the cost is out of reach for the average person. I had to stop collecting Sega Saturn games because the cost was getting ridiculous and having other adult responsibilities, it's now out of reach. And as there is no appetite to re-release those Saturn games so you now only have two options if you don't have the money - go without or go on the Jolly Roger.
this is why I'm so Done with Buying Retro and just going the Emulation and Homebrewing as this just killed my fav. hobby and gaming but hey I gotten into Comics but it just seems like being Low-income person your shit out luck.
For me, i only started caring as much about the older games because i wasnt feeling satisfied with modern games. Older games are often just more fun and more appealing to me. I often just prefer japanese games as well so ive been getting those older games.
Once social media came out and the games were just more "pure" in japan for how they were, i cared more about them. So what partly blame is localizers, censorship, and translaters, regional exclusives, and often changes that altered the game made me interested in the original version, character models and text, etc. Same with japanese getting exlcusive versions like pokemon crystal that had unique looks and unique mew ds. I dont care for a 5 screw variant of a nes but i do want a full complete box edition of earthbound. i collect my FAVORITE games and some others i like because of the collector items. I love my lunar 2 collectors edition because of the extra stuff it has.
One thing I've noticed since I started collecting 10 years ago is that even younger generations have been interested in the older games and collecting them since they never got to see them brand new like we possibly did and now that they are rare, they are more interested.
I’m watching this as I literally just paid multiple hundreds for a couple Japanese games earlier today
Retro video games are finite.
Since the rpgs in Japan is the genre of choice there (like fps shooters are in america) there pretty cheap. Also the reason why rpgs in Japan are pretty cheap still is bc 99% of westerners cannot read nor speak Japanese. I think this is why your seeing universal games like smhups, action,& fighting games with very little Japanese fly off the shelves with insane prices.
Game collecting was definitely already happening in the late 90s to early 00s. For example, on the Digital Press forum. It’s not accurate to say no one cared. Lots of people collected, just not at the extreme mass social media scale that happened later. Deals were more plentiful back then for sure, but it’s an exaggeration to say that you could easily find eg Super Mario RPG for $3-4 at the flea market. That was always a desirable game. $20 was not an absurdly high price for it, that would have been an average or even slightly low price. Source: I was there 😋
I usually buy Japanese games from Japan via Ebay, Need to get Cocoron for my Nes soon before it goes up in price haha, so yeah I could see why Ebay is part of the issue for Japanese collectors, I have seen how people from different parts of the world keep buying Rockman and Akumaju for the Snes and Nes, and lots of Saturn/PC Engine and PlayStation games from Japan, soon all their games will be in foreign lands.
thank you slim boogie
It was me. I bought MOTHER 2 in a Book-Off in Fukuoka last year. It was like less than 2000 yen. Sorry.
This video seems pretty accurate. And it seems it's only going to get worse.
The real reason is that no one wants to work, yet do what they love. So they all took their covid checks and bought everything up, to resell. Also new games are full of politics, and censorship. Old games are not. I havent bought a new game in years. I was born in 84. I have been collecting since the beginning.
one word: resellers
When I was in Tokyo last Summer all the big retro stores were stuffed full of rare and interesting stuff. Even in Super Potato there was a YM-901 for $600, and hundreds of rare consoles and games. People say the prices have gone up, but great value was there to be found on lots of rare titles. Generally much cheaper than we sell stuff for. I'm the world's first Retrogamer by the way, selling since 1995 😆
A lot has to do with the youtubers such as yourself promoting these cheap prices places so foreigners go over to buy up all the stock so its not surprising 2nd hand shops will raise prices as their stock dwindles.
last year i ordered kamen rider batride war 2 (PS3) for 15 euros from japan to netherlands now its 130 euros on amazon LOL !!!!!
everyone resellers now
smart phones around 2011 were still growing and not omnipresent, but sure they changed everything in video game accesibility, vbut the iPad was patient zero, during 2011... not before that , impossible technically. Not yet intelligent phones mate
Japan has been wiped out by all these locusts.
I just want a 3ds with the original 3gens of pokemon
My thoughts? Because 2nd hand and local personalized Game Stores can & will hook us up all good as wood carved by my Indian great gand am pa bear!
Very valid points indeed
Little Samson for 1.99 at Funcoland
As a Mexican, I can feel the pain of having dollar flipping tourists breaking the local economy, while they’re smiling, laughing, taking our culture as if it was an amusement park. It’s painful, and to us, it’s sickening.
tfw no gatekeeping
its because of tiktok
30 + minutes of doodles 🤦♀️🤦♀️
I was in Tokyo last year and was looking into a few places, Book Off, Super Potato, etc. All gone.
They aren't gone. They're most certainly still there. And there are plenty of deals to have on games.
Super Potato was never cheap and prices were always higher than in other stores. They are focused more on having a wide catalogue with harder to find pieces (at higher prices ofc)
How much was your flight 🛫? Lol
2024: :(