Archives for August 1998

Archives for August 1998

August 27, 1998 How many of you remember that old add where the guys are sitting around and one of em says "it just doesn't get any better than this!" Well that's about how I feel right now. I'm sittling in the building where Konami has its Tokyo office, eating a juicy bacon cheese burger, & drinking root beer. Why is this reltated to game collectiing? This is a good a time as any to introduce the Japanese passion for reference books. There are two books published annually here which are indisposable for people who are maniacs about this industry. The first is called "Dai Giren" and it is a guide which lists almost every console game ever published for every system in Japan. Very handy reference for the collector. The second is a sort of job seekers book for the video game industry. It lists the names, addresses, average starting salaries and employee gender breakdowns for almost every publisher or development house in Japan worth knowing about. The 1999 edition lists about 220 companies. Looking through that I figured out that there are lots of game companies located not to far away from where I work or live. Eventually I'll go around with my digital camera and get pictures for the site.

Big thank yous to all of you who wrote in with get well soon messages! I really appretiate that. All shipments are back on schedule and I'm planning a big hunting trip for this Saturday so I should refresh my pages by the end of the weekend.

August 17, 1998 Being laid up sick sometimes has it's advantages. I've caught up on a lot of email and programming I've been wanting to do and now I'll write about two things I wanted to mention. The first thing is a couple of Japanese gaming magazines which are pretty well unknown outisde of Japan. The first of these is called "Used Games" and it is devoted to collectors. They do reviews of older games and even feature a few shops every issue which specialize in used game product. They even do the occaisional "area guide" to feature shops in a certain part of Japan. Very good stuff with lots of obscure info. The second mag is called "Game Lab" and it is devoted to mostly grey area topics like "backups" and system modifications. If you ever wanted to learn how to overclock your N64, make your own dual shock steering wheel or add power level lights to your game boy, this is the magazine for you! On the other hand, it does seem that lots of pages are devoted to the "art" of backups and CD-R copying. It amazes me that people can waste so much time and energy on stealing things. If these people could put half of that energy towards crating things we might have more cool games and hardware.

The other thing is about where games are sold here in Japan. Game shops are much more common here in Japan than they are in the US. Lots of times you don't have to go more than 100 yards from most any train station to find a dedicated game shop. Of course there is the game vending machine which I mentioned before, and finally you can buy games from convenience stores. You can walk into most any Circle K, Lawsons, or 7-11 and buy a PSX, Saturn and a few games. This is not just in the major cities, but in almost any small town in Japan. I bought my copy of Soul Edge from a "combini" (convienience store) in my wife's home town over New Years a year or so ago. The convenience stores charge list price, but if you just gotta have the new PSX hit at 3AM, the combini is the way to go.

Some Lawsons also have a machine which you can buy a "blank" SFC memory cassette and download games. I guess it contains some sort of SRAM cuz you can erase games when you are tired of them and free up space for new ones. Some games are even released only for this system like Derby Stalion 98. Weekly Famitsu did a little short on this thing and showed how the games are sent out to the Lawsons stores on CD-ROM for use in these machines. Nintendo certainly figured out a pretty good way to extend the life of their 16 bit cash cow!

August 14, 1998 My oh my, it's been a while. Here's the news:

Please fill out my RPG survey. The link is above. This is totally to satisfy my own curiosity and will not trap your email address or any other sleazy stuff like that.

I'm crazy sick. Hopefully this won't affect anyone's shipments too much.

Akihabara is loaded with good stuff once again! After a long dry spell with very little in the way of cool games or unusuall hardware, Akiba is back in full swing. In the past couple of weeks I've seen a PCE Print Booster, LTs, Sharp Twin Famicoms, Squaresoft games for MSX, Pulstar cartridges, Dracula X, Famicom guns (much more rare than the NES light gun) and lots of other stuff. Did I buy any of this good stuff? Not really. Why? Two reasons. First of all the Citibank ATM at Akihabara is broken most of the time lately. Thanks to the fact that Japanese banks don't communicate with foreign banks, that is my only way to get cash around there. The second reason is:

Akihabara has suddenly become MUCH more expensive. Not just the rare stuff like I mentioned above but also everyday stuff. This really stinks! Looks like I'm gonna have to go far and wide just to fill my own collecting appetite, much less offer anything like reasonable prices on this site.

I got one VERY interesting item from a computer junk shop near my office. It is a "Sega Saturn Programming Box" made by Sophia Systems. I can't seem to get the thing to boot up and I don't have any docs for it. When I called Sophia Systems, they forwarded my inquiry to someone at Sega who repied "if you are not a registered developer, we can't provide you with any documentation." Poop. Anyway, I'll try to get some pics of this thing up this weekend. If anyone has any knowledge of this thing, please let me know if you can do so without violating any NDA you might be under.

Australia and Singapore seem to totally stink for console videogames. I didn't spend much time on it but I didn't see anything even vaugely good in either place.

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