You can tell by the tag at the top that they bought it at Super Potato. It's a tourist shop.
that's like $25
Exchange rates fluctuate but in the domestic currency it's nearly $40. Back when the yen rate was normal it's more like $30 or $35. That's not the point; this game used to sell for $1 loose just a couple of years ago.
>Exchange rates fluctuate but in the domestic currency it's nearly $40. Back when the yen rate was normal it's more like $30 or $35.
i'm too moronic to understand what you mean
To a Japanese person, they see that price and think what an American thinks when they see a ~$40 price tag. In "normal" times an American would see 3,700 yen and see it as $35 due to the exchange rate, but since the yen is currently fun money versus the USD, an American looking at 3,700 yen sees $25.
Then why do they want hundreds of dollars for simple Mega Drive games from Japan on eBay right now? The Japanese are scalping the American Market. I won't pay it. I bought Sonic 2, Shining Force, Shining Force 2, all very nice, CIB, for about 20 to 25 USD a piece in the past couple months. Already that's nearly impossible to do. I still want a Sonic 1 CIB and getting that for under $35 is becoming next to impossible.
Because they can. While somewhat savvy Western buyers can get good deals due to the exchange rate, savvy Japanese sellers can and have been milking ridiculous money out of Western collectors, so it evens out. One big downside of buying from Japan now is that since COVID, international shipping rates have spiked, so you pretty much have to buy in bulk to really realize all of the savings. It's not a huge deal if you use some sort of deputy service and just let them accumulate a few months worth of purchases before shipping to you, but obviously you're waiting for months to get your items and the longer it's in storage the higher the chance that something gets lost or damaged (I actually had a deputy service THROW OUT an item by mistake, granted they refunded everything, but still, I wanted the rare item more than the money).
Because they can. While somewhat savvy Western buyers can get good deals due to the exchange rate, savvy Japanese sellers can and have been milking ridiculous money out of Western collectors, so it evens out. One big downside of buying from Japan now is that since COVID, international shipping rates have spiked, so you pretty much have to buy in bulk to really realize all of the savings. It's not a huge deal if you use some sort of deputy service and just let them accumulate a few months worth of purchases before shipping to you, but obviously you're waiting for months to get your items and the longer it's in storage the higher the chance that something gets lost or damaged (I actually had a deputy service THROW OUT an item by mistake, granted they refunded everything, but still, I wanted the rare item more than the money).
Mega Drive games have been expensive for a good while now since there's not a whole lot of them. Of course prices have gone up as some people imported Japanese copies. You're not going to get something like El Viento for under $200, for instance. Even games like Sonic 3 are expensive.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>Even games like Sonic 3 are expensive.
This is the issue. Obviously El Viento is expensive. Why are some Japanese Resellers asking for 60 or even 140 dollars for Sonic Spinball? It's not even that good. Oh well. It's just frustrating, eventually prices for stuff like that will come back down for a bit at some point.
I feel sorry for Japanese videogame buyers, it must be next to impossible to compete with overseas currencies right now. But as with all things it will likely pass before too long, I remember when roles were reversed and the exchange rate was like 80 yen to the dollar or something.
While this is also a factor, prices are going up in general. Games that were a few dollars are now much more. And likewise, rare games that costed hundreds are now dipping into the thousands. Foreigners can buy for cheaper with the current exchange rate, but prices are high across the board and are continuing to go up.
2018 was the last year the Japanese market was still relatively untapped. I remember buying sufami, famicom, Saturn and gameboy games for literally Pennie’s. Shit was crazy
That's not it. Japanese gamers have been collecting for years, but in Japan a game collection is like a library of games that you play and the concept of "premium games" has always been limited to legitimately rare stuff but even those weren't especially expensive.
A lot of gamers either don't have space for a huge collection or don't want a massive library so they would buy games, play them, then sell them back to the store. This kind of gamer typically relies on the stores having a wide selection of games as they always have, and likewise these are the guys hit hardest by the latest trend.
The "junk" bins are mostly just overstocked games (stuff like Dragon Quest), although sometimes games go there if they have major cosmetic issues.
The concept of "this is a good game so it's worth a lot of money!" or "my old junk is worth a lot of money" (which I like to call Beanie Baby Economics) is a very Western-specific concept and even today it's not a thing in Japan. As prices go up, more and more Japanese gamers are posting online trying to figure out why foreigners are paying so much for these games and are connecting the dots that the price increases outside of the tourist districts is due to software disappearing from the domestic market as places like Super Potato continue to sell to tourists.
Even the government has commented on it as the national library has cited it as one of the reasons they are starting to archive games.
And this isn't exclusive to games btw. For what ever reason, westerners want to buybold Japanese stuff whether that be video games, animation cells, film cameras, or anything else. Each community has reacted slightly differently, with the most extreme probably being animation cells as there are efforts to preserve them and keep them from being sold to foreigners entirely.
It's wild to me that westerners buying Japanese games has become so mainstream that it's a problem for gamers in Japan. When I started buying Japanese releases 20 years ago, it felt like outside of a small handful of titles and systems (like MSX), very few collectors in the US really cared about imports at all, to the point that I recognized this one guy who I was always bidding against for unusual CIB Famicom games. Now everybody with a YouTube channel is showing off their epic hauls of random junk lots.
No it's not. I'm pretty heavily into the CSGO skin scene and the absolute worst and most obnoxious "collectors" obsessing over rare and old skins are the Chinese, not just individuals, but as a group. It's an almost autistic obsession with categorizing things and cataloguing them creating tier lists of rarity and whole social hierarchies based on the top collectors. Even your basic entry-level Chinese player is involved in collecting and skins which can't be said for Westerners who still overwhelmingly view them as playskins to be used in-game (similar to your example of Japanese using the games as they were intended).
The Asians are not some bemused group amazed at how Westerners are "materialistic" collectors and they are the "pure gamers" shocked at the selfish "beanie baby economics" whittu man buying their games. The only valid point you make is that Westerners tend to collect things from other cultures, Asians tend to be very insular.
>this game used to sell for $1 loose just a couple of years ago
You can thank tendies for that (just to be clear, I don't have anything against Nintendo games, they're great, but you probably know which kind of Nintendo fan I'm talking about)
>Exchange rates fluctuate but in the domestic currency it's nearly $40. Back when the yen rate was normal it's more like $30 or $35.
That's nothing, I saw a copy of Pokemon Emerald sell for the equivalent of 180 EUR a few days ago. Pokemon games have no right to be this expensive, they were some of the most popular and best selling games ever. The problem is that now most copies are stuck in hands of "collectors" who don't play them and just put them in a box to rot away quietly instead. Those games are not rare by any means, I can look up any Pokemon title on my local online marketplace website and easily get many more hits than for some niche games that I bought for pennies. Mutualist take on private property is right, speculation is the cancer killing video game collecting. This bubble is gonna burst some day and those people will realize that they wasted all of their money. I can't wait for that.
>*playing using flashcarts on real hardware is the correct thing to do
Some of us live in PAL territories, so playing anything before sixth gen on original hardware is pointless
9 months ago
Anonymous
>pointless
50 FPS makes playing a game pointless? Grow up.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Not a Euro but I'm pretty sure that even if they played a 50hz back then, they can't go back after tasting 60hz
9 months ago
Anonymous
It is incredibly difficult to go back. I put up with Wipeout 2097 and Gex 3D because the localization makes those games better. If anyone made a conversation for the NTSC versions I would drop the PAL versions immediately
9 months ago
Anonymous
Back in the day your local console video game shop would offer a 60Hz modding service alongside import video game sales. These days you can't get it done on the high street but you do have many more far easier options if you're willing to solder yourself. Failing that it's super easy to buy a pre-modded console on ebay. That's what I did. SEGA consoles I soldered the switches myself because it's trivial, Nintendo I bought pre-made ones off the ebay for like £20 premium over a plain console. But to be honest once I had access to 60Hz games I stopped obsessing over it and now I just play them interchangeably.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Yea, that's why PAL land sucks and their games are worthless. Nobody want stinky PAL games.
9 months ago
Anonymous
just get a modchip phaggot
9 months ago
Anonymous
Modchips to make PALgays like shitty PAL versions don't exist yet silly. Best we can do is some cope about a handful of PAL exclusives they'll never own.
9 months ago
Anonymous
PAL/NTSC does only apply to consoles and not the handhelds, tho.
i have several cases of unopened ds pokemon games, the fact theyve skyrocketed in price is moronic since theyre not even retro yet, but it is what it is
>Super Potato. It's a tourist shop.
Why is this such a tourist shop?
I was there on my trip and was disgusted with the prices, if I wanted to get ripped off like that I could do it on Ebay from home with games actually in my language.
It's not even some pretty store or whatever.
It's kind of tucked away and if I didn't already know about it from online, I wouldn't have found it.
The arcade section of it was trash, like complete doodoo, especially considering the litany of really good arcades in Akihabara, let alone in the rest of Tokyo.
Super Potato was booty, dunno why people go there or recommend it.
>Super Potato was booty, dunno why people go there or recommend it.
Probably a holdover from the early days of relaying stories on the internet about shopping for old games in Japan; pretty sure I remember reading gaijin stories about going to Super Potato even back in the early 2000s, when it likely had better prices. Other people probably read similar accounts, went there themselves, relayed their own stories, and the cycle continued, to the point that "retrogame shopping at Super Potato" became a meme rite of passage for any foreign gamer visiting Japan. Maybe Super Potato actually had the best selection and presentation back then, or maybe it was just total chance that some travelers happened to pick Super Potato as the gaming store to write about a couple decades ago, and if they'd chosen any other store, that one would've become the designated tourist trap retrogame shop.
Filthy gaijins ruined the jp retro market by buying copies of popular games enmasse to resell back at home, even RPGs, which are destined to become shelf decorations because obviously neither them nor their prospective buyers can fricking read them.
Ecelebs played a big part too, with their "check my epic Akihabara retro haul!" style garbage videos.
I'm a collector. I own some now very expensive games and hardware from multiple decades multiple platforms. I detest people like you who just want to get things for free. You're able to play all of these games for free, right now. You're only crying because you want these games to resell your self. I don't resell hardly anything. I'm still collecting to this day. I just change what I buy because I'm not paying crazy prices, but you won't see me crying about it like a little b***h like you do.
>DUDE YOU BUY BOOKS? YOU ARE JUST A COLLECTOR YOU DONT EVEN READ THEM
Not that anon, but thats a tard tier cope you just made.
9 months ago
Anonymous
The moment you identify as a "collector" before anything else there's no way you've played half of your games for more than an hour
9 months ago
Anonymous
Im not using the term "gamer" to describe myself in current year, sorry.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Yes, you're a sophisticated electronic toy collector
9 months ago
Anonymous
Right? Any more I like what I like and I try not to worry about other "Gamers" or collectors. If I worried about it too much I'd start feeling too ashamed to even keep what I've collected already. The whole modern crowd takes all of the fun out of it. There's no sense of community for people that just like finding new games to play and building a collection over the years as a hobby. Everything has to be a BIG DEAL. Drama drama drama...
I like that I've gotten back all the games I liked growing up. I like that I've built up a very nice collection of games I would have loved to had growing up with too. The pure aesthetic of some of these Mega Drive games puts me over the moon. The culture the developers cultivated and surrounded them selves with as they made ground breaking games. That's what I like. That's what I collect.
>So you don't even play video games
Could you go sperg out somewhere else? I have an AV Famicom hooked up to a 14'' crt on my desk as I'm typing this. I just bought the damn thing for $65 a couple weeks ago so I could properly use the Famicom N8 I've had for years.
All people like you do is cry for handouts. Go play all the games you want for free. You don't see collectors like me crying like a b***h over the price of MUSHA or Robo Aleste. Which I don't have either of those games, and I probably never will.
9 months ago
Anonymous
you are such a homosexual please ROPE
9 months ago
Anonymous
>You don't see collectors like me crying like a b***h over the price
we see them crying and complaining all the time like OPgay complaining of the low price of a game,or others liek you complaining of emulators and rom piracy ruined the bubble i meant market so the price is lower then what it should be.
>I'm a scalper
that's all i was able to read,now will you die in this moment.
and is called scalping,no matter how you justify yourself,old tech is old tech and will never change.
Tell have you done maintainance to the tech like cleaning the boards,removing dust and resoldering everything to keep it working to justify the value you are charging.
>I'm a scalper
I'm sure you are. Since they're the only people that care what collectors do. I have boxes of that I've bought. I have boxes of shit from my childhood. You will continue to seethe.
9 months ago
Anonymous
are you so new to this land mate.
scalpers are cancer same as collectors >look at me i have this game mass produced and i am selling it as something that was made in limited quantities some dumb gay will pay money for it,no it doesn't work but has sentimental value which increases price.
most of those "collector" stuff in shelves are rotting right now because they don't give maintainance to the equipments.
i still haven't seen a collector selling something that has been maintained perfectly and is still in working state >bought original snes >the guy used chemicals to make it look as new >most of the parts were rotten and with mold >didn't work >ask refund and get it back >send a video to the guy breaking the shit he sent
i do that with any piece of shit collectors sell.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>hobby
Buying shit is not a hobby, you soulless consoomer.
I wish more people understood this. Nobody cares what you bought, nobody cares what you own.
>Why do people pay such moronic prices?
Because they're children who want old toys. Just like you. Except not poorgay.
You have a mental illness. If you're this obsessed about it I suggest you find a new hobby. This isn't healthy.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>This isn't healthy.
Indeed. Rage replying to a bunch of random people for the (You)s is a sure sign of mental illness.
No one's buying up the japanese version of the GAMES to sell in the western market. They're buying up the japanese version of the CONSOLES to sell to the western market.
How the frick are they gonna sell these games when no one can read moon runes?
>How the frick are they gonna sell these games when no one can read moon runes?
Because 95% of jp retro games don't require any knowledge of japanese to play? And coomlectors don't play anyways, it goes straight to the display shelf - especially with popular franchises such as FF, DQ, Persona etc.
Normies didnt ruin the hobby. Even if every nignog into retro to the point they wanted to actually own jap copies were to buy a copy, it still would barely have made an indent in their back story if they were buying directly from Japan. There would be plenty to go around for nostalgic nips and gaijin fricks that still would not be the equivalent to the total copies sold back when these games were new. The issue is the reseller buying 50 copies of a game just to resell it at jacked up prices. Some vacationer buying one copy isnt making a difference. Someone buying as much as they can carry, will.
Likewise, actual Japs are willing to sell directly to foreign markets so of course people are going to buy it up. Its not "stealing stock" when they are willing to package it up carefully along with a thank you note and shit it to your address. If they want to go get mad at someone, they can start on their own home turf.
>Some vacationer buying one copy isnt making a difference
Thousands of vacationers buying upba copy every day for years and years IS making a difference. Even the Japanese government commented on it. Just take the L.
>Even the Japanese government commented on it
Uh yeah, the resellers buying multiple copies. It was never an issue until the retro boom and people realized they could buy and resell the shit for 5 times what its worth. Even if its one person buyine 1 copy over decades, its still not coming close to the amount being bought up in bulk if you compare which group is exporting the greater amount of copies. The lone buyers are still drops in the bucket compared to resellers.
It's not just the resellers you dunce. There are less copies on the domestic market because they're being carried across the border by the fricking thousands. The resellers are a part of that but also the problem is that there's just less fricking games available.
Never said it was just the resellers, tard. If the resellers were not in the picture and it was just 1 person buying 1 copy it would still not be that bad. Would their be less copies? Sure. But it would not be to the degree like it is now. Going off of Pokemon games, you have what, millions of copies in Japan alone that were sold? That same million of copies is not going to be going back into the hands of millions of people interested in a copy. Even if every "retro gamer" wanted a copy world-wide, as in the people who actually have enough interest to want to import a copy of a game they probably cant even read, in addition to the ones that can read it, its still not going to suck up all of those millions of copies that are still floating around for resale in Japan. Now, if instead of every 1 copy per 1 person, its 50 copies per person, scrounging up every copy they can spend their English teaching check on in every store they can hit in a 5 mile radius, yes, that will speed up the process significantly more. As others have also said, its the hyping up collecting these games to people who had no initial interest to do so before as well that has only fueled resellers to buy even more copies because they are going to sell and they wont be sitting on stock for long. So yes, maybe in 2050, if every individual person visiting Japan was buying up a copy of Pokemon red, maybe by then it would have become an issue, but the resellers are 90% of the problem for any nip who is upset about dwindling stock.
>If the resellers were not in the picture and it was just 1 person buying 1 copy it would still not be that bad.
THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ARE COMING AND BUYING COPIES AND GOING HOME. EVERY SINGLE DAY. They don't just shop at Super Potato you moron, they go to Hard Off, random flea markets and everywhere else.
A lot of retro games didn't get huge print runs like modern games. Sure some stuff like pokemon sold in the millions but for a lot of these games there's a very real chance that most of the domestic stock could disappear in just a few years. >the resellers are 90% of the problem
They are a part of the problem, but they are not 90% of the problem.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ARE COMING AND BUYING COPIES AND GOING HOME. EVERY SINGLE DAY.
That's not happening. At all. You're imagining things about something you're clearly very very obsessed with.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Yes it is! Even the government commented on it! That's literally why the national archive is starting to archive games! Just because you say something isn't happening doesn't mean it's not happening you moron.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>Even the government commented on it!
Maybe you should take a break from these old games if it bothers you this much.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>They are a part of the problem, but they are not 90% of the problem.
Yes they are. it's exactly the same thing that's happening in e.g. the TCG market with games like MtG. So-called "investors" are buying up 90% of the supply driving prices to the moon intentionally. It's pretty obvious if you look at price development, i.e. not organically but in sudden spikes. Do you think in 2021 everyone just magically realized "Gee, Sliver Queen is a really great card"? And it's the same with basically all kinds of pop cultural collectibles, including vidya, because these markets are relatively easy to manipulate (you don't need to be the Wolf of Wall Street to buy 100 copies of a snes game).
Plus, there are a lot of manchildren out there deluding themselves that they are making a "financial investment" while "buying what they love" - kind of a have your cake and eat it delusion typical of half-wits who are too dumb and/or lazy to educate themselves on finance stuff for responsible adults - people that would rather max out 10 credit cards to buy loose copies of earthbound. This shit happens all the time in MtG: "Hey Rudy, love the channel, I spent my kid's college fund on 5000 copies of Baron Sengir and now the card went down 30% and I have to move out of the house. How can this be?" Sadly, this also seems to be a uniquely American phenomenon. Japanese people just don't do this. Why? Genes? Education? Nature or nurture - the great debate.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah, I just emulate now and I’ve moved on to only hobbies I can easily cost control: working out, coding, reading, watching old movies, cooking, etc
Every possible industry where you would be inclined to collect is going through this right now. If you have the financial freedom to ignore that fact more power to you, but it gets harder and harder to justify for me.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>Japanese people just don't do this. Why? Genes? Education? Nature or nurture - the great debate.
Most Japanese people simply don't have space for 500 copies of the same game inside their house, for one. The reason Japanese market is better than USA is because Japanese people: 1) have to give away, trade away or sell off their games frequently because of space contraints; 2) generally treat their stuff with care so fewer copies get lost or destroyed with careless handling.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Source: your butthole
9 months ago
Anonymous
Tell me how to store 500 copies of the same game inside a 25m^2 flat and still have space to live there, homosexual.
9 months ago
Anonymous
There's lots of "hidden" storage space, even in small apartments, and more economical use of space in general. 500 snes games is definitely not a problem. Japanese collect stuff too, y'know.
It's not just the resellers you dunce. There are less copies on the domestic market because they're being carried across the border by the fricking thousands. The resellers are a part of that but also the problem is that there's just less fricking games available.
>If the resellers were not in the picture and it was just 1 person buying 1 copy it would still not be that bad.
THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ARE COMING AND BUYING COPIES AND GOING HOME. EVERY SINGLE DAY. They don't just shop at Super Potato you moron, they go to Hard Off, random flea markets and everywhere else.
A lot of retro games didn't get huge print runs like modern games. Sure some stuff like pokemon sold in the millions but for a lot of these games there's a very real chance that most of the domestic stock could disappear in just a few years. >the resellers are 90% of the problem
They are a part of the problem, but they are not 90% of the problem.
Yes it is! Even the government commented on it! That's literally why the national archive is starting to archive games! Just because you say something isn't happening doesn't mean it's not happening you moron.
You keep spouting this nonsense but have provided absolutely no evidence
>open ebay store >list Japanese games >send Chinese fake covered in a harmful substance >you get package >open it >unwrap game >get substance on your hands before you realize it's a fake
Frick around and find out.
>Normies have ruined this hobby
How? You can pirate every single game released on most consoles with a couple clicks of your mouse. You can then play those games in an emulator, or put the on a flashcart for your consoles. Why the frick are you buying retro video games?
Am I supposed to feel bad for Japan? I’m not Japanese. Life isn’t fair. sorry you can’t buy your plastic junk, emulate like everyone else who also has to deal with inflated prices.
You morons are literally so gay and wapanese mindbroken that you’re acting like a Japanese defense force online for a country that not only doesn’t know or care you exist, but would probably be repulsed by you in person.
is the normal price of old stuff >but muuhhh nostalgia gives it value
and is only sentimental value for a mass produced game
is called used goods for a reason.
why should i pay 400 dollars for an old used game when i can get it cheap.
A lot of time it is just due to ignorance. Decades ago I was at a Gamestop with my friend and his (now wife) and she saw some Namco collection with Pac Man for PS2 and wanted to buy it. It's like, you're going to pay $20+ to pay Pac Man in this day and age? She would have because she didn't know emulation existed. Many such cases.
You Black folk are so stupid. You act like Ganker is Twitter, thinking you'll get banhammered for saying no-no words. That why you come up with shitty meme phrases like "Safe horny", "coomer" and "normie", frickin' baby.
I don't support cancel culture. OP has a right to post his video game thoughts without being censored.
>Reporting low quality threads is considered "cancel culture"
You are what's ruining the site and this board. Have fun being old news, pushed out by Zoomers and Gen AlphaBlack folk in the coming years where everything is Gen 6 discussion and above.
I just use flashcarts/roms. I'm going to Japan soon and want to find a GB Micro, since they're cheaper there and me using Pounds makes it even cheaper. Random shops in Akihabara, mainly underground ones or Radio Kaikan should have good deals.
you're the very first person I've seen say that, which makes me think you're just a moron
I got an SP-001, also want to find a 101 and the Micro will be a beater I'll take to work and everywhere else
that's like $25
I have no idea why anybody in Japan would pay that much for a loose copy of that. You can buy one right now for less than a third of that price.
You can tell by the tag at the top that they bought it at Super Potato. It's a tourist shop.
Exchange rates fluctuate but in the domestic currency it's nearly $40. Back when the yen rate was normal it's more like $30 or $35. That's not the point; this game used to sell for $1 loose just a couple of years ago.
>Exchange rates fluctuate but in the domestic currency it's nearly $40. Back when the yen rate was normal it's more like $30 or $35.
i'm too moronic to understand what you mean
To a Japanese person, they see that price and think what an American thinks when they see a ~$40 price tag. In "normal" times an American would see 3,700 yen and see it as $35 due to the exchange rate, but since the yen is currently fun money versus the USD, an American looking at 3,700 yen sees $25.
why does that happen?
Exchange rates fluctuate due to a variety of reasons.
Then why do they want hundreds of dollars for simple Mega Drive games from Japan on eBay right now? The Japanese are scalping the American Market. I won't pay it. I bought Sonic 2, Shining Force, Shining Force 2, all very nice, CIB, for about 20 to 25 USD a piece in the past couple months. Already that's nearly impossible to do. I still want a Sonic 1 CIB and getting that for under $35 is becoming next to impossible.
Because they can. While somewhat savvy Western buyers can get good deals due to the exchange rate, savvy Japanese sellers can and have been milking ridiculous money out of Western collectors, so it evens out. One big downside of buying from Japan now is that since COVID, international shipping rates have spiked, so you pretty much have to buy in bulk to really realize all of the savings. It's not a huge deal if you use some sort of deputy service and just let them accumulate a few months worth of purchases before shipping to you, but obviously you're waiting for months to get your items and the longer it's in storage the higher the chance that something gets lost or damaged (I actually had a deputy service THROW OUT an item by mistake, granted they refunded everything, but still, I wanted the rare item more than the money).
Mega Drive games have been expensive for a good while now since there's not a whole lot of them. Of course prices have gone up as some people imported Japanese copies. You're not going to get something like El Viento for under $200, for instance. Even games like Sonic 3 are expensive.
>Even games like Sonic 3 are expensive.
This is the issue. Obviously El Viento is expensive. Why are some Japanese Resellers asking for 60 or even 140 dollars for Sonic Spinball? It's not even that good. Oh well. It's just frustrating, eventually prices for stuff like that will come back down for a bit at some point.
I feel sorry for Japanese videogame buyers, it must be next to impossible to compete with overseas currencies right now. But as with all things it will likely pass before too long, I remember when roles were reversed and the exchange rate was like 80 yen to the dollar or something.
While this is also a factor, prices are going up in general. Games that were a few dollars are now much more. And likewise, rare games that costed hundreds are now dipping into the thousands. Foreigners can buy for cheaper with the current exchange rate, but prices are high across the board and are continuing to go up.
2018 was the last year the Japanese market was still relatively untapped. I remember buying sufami, famicom, Saturn and gameboy games for literally Pennie’s. Shit was crazy
They had little concept of nostalgia and collectability for what they still consider "junk". I think the West changed that.
That's not it. Japanese gamers have been collecting for years, but in Japan a game collection is like a library of games that you play and the concept of "premium games" has always been limited to legitimately rare stuff but even those weren't especially expensive.
A lot of gamers either don't have space for a huge collection or don't want a massive library so they would buy games, play them, then sell them back to the store. This kind of gamer typically relies on the stores having a wide selection of games as they always have, and likewise these are the guys hit hardest by the latest trend.
The "junk" bins are mostly just overstocked games (stuff like Dragon Quest), although sometimes games go there if they have major cosmetic issues.
The concept of "this is a good game so it's worth a lot of money!" or "my old junk is worth a lot of money" (which I like to call Beanie Baby Economics) is a very Western-specific concept and even today it's not a thing in Japan. As prices go up, more and more Japanese gamers are posting online trying to figure out why foreigners are paying so much for these games and are connecting the dots that the price increases outside of the tourist districts is due to software disappearing from the domestic market as places like Super Potato continue to sell to tourists.
Even the government has commented on it as the national library has cited it as one of the reasons they are starting to archive games.
And this isn't exclusive to games btw. For what ever reason, westerners want to buybold Japanese stuff whether that be video games, animation cells, film cameras, or anything else. Each community has reacted slightly differently, with the most extreme probably being animation cells as there are efforts to preserve them and keep them from being sold to foreigners entirely.
It's wild to me that westerners buying Japanese games has become so mainstream that it's a problem for gamers in Japan. When I started buying Japanese releases 20 years ago, it felt like outside of a small handful of titles and systems (like MSX), very few collectors in the US really cared about imports at all, to the point that I recognized this one guy who I was always bidding against for unusual CIB Famicom games. Now everybody with a YouTube channel is showing off their epic hauls of random junk lots.
a very Western-specific concept
No it's not. I'm pretty heavily into the CSGO skin scene and the absolute worst and most obnoxious "collectors" obsessing over rare and old skins are the Chinese, not just individuals, but as a group. It's an almost autistic obsession with categorizing things and cataloguing them creating tier lists of rarity and whole social hierarchies based on the top collectors. Even your basic entry-level Chinese player is involved in collecting and skins which can't be said for Westerners who still overwhelmingly view them as playskins to be used in-game (similar to your example of Japanese using the games as they were intended).
The Asians are not some bemused group amazed at how Westerners are "materialistic" collectors and they are the "pure gamers" shocked at the selfish "beanie baby economics" whittu man buying their games. The only valid point you make is that Westerners tend to collect things from other cultures, Asians tend to be very insular.
>this game used to sell for $1 loose just a couple of years ago
You can thank tendies for that (just to be clear, I don't have anything against Nintendo games, they're great, but you probably know which kind of Nintendo fan I'm talking about)
>Exchange rates fluctuate but in the domestic currency it's nearly $40. Back when the yen rate was normal it's more like $30 or $35.
That's nothing, I saw a copy of Pokemon Emerald sell for the equivalent of 180 EUR a few days ago. Pokemon games have no right to be this expensive, they were some of the most popular and best selling games ever. The problem is that now most copies are stuck in hands of "collectors" who don't play them and just put them in a box to rot away quietly instead. Those games are not rare by any means, I can look up any Pokemon title on my local online marketplace website and easily get many more hits than for some niche games that I bought for pennies. Mutualist take on private property is right, speculation is the cancer killing video game collecting. This bubble is gonna burst some day and those people will realize that they wasted all of their money. I can't wait for that.
As always, emulation is the correct thing to do if you want to enjoy the game. Hoarding plastic on your shelves is just mental illness.
>emulation is the correct thing to do
*playing using flashcarts on real hardware is the correct thing to do
>*playing using flashcarts on real hardware is the correct thing to do
Some of us live in PAL territories, so playing anything before sixth gen on original hardware is pointless
>pointless
50 FPS makes playing a game pointless? Grow up.
Not a Euro but I'm pretty sure that even if they played a 50hz back then, they can't go back after tasting 60hz
It is incredibly difficult to go back. I put up with Wipeout 2097 and Gex 3D because the localization makes those games better. If anyone made a conversation for the NTSC versions I would drop the PAL versions immediately
Back in the day your local console video game shop would offer a 60Hz modding service alongside import video game sales. These days you can't get it done on the high street but you do have many more far easier options if you're willing to solder yourself. Failing that it's super easy to buy a pre-modded console on ebay. That's what I did. SEGA consoles I soldered the switches myself because it's trivial, Nintendo I bought pre-made ones off the ebay for like £20 premium over a plain console. But to be honest once I had access to 60Hz games I stopped obsessing over it and now I just play them interchangeably.
Yea, that's why PAL land sucks and their games are worthless. Nobody want stinky PAL games.
just get a modchip phaggot
Modchips to make PALgays like shitty PAL versions don't exist yet silly. Best we can do is some cope about a handful of PAL exclusives they'll never own.
PAL/NTSC does only apply to consoles and not the handhelds, tho.
i have several cases of unopened ds pokemon games, the fact theyve skyrocketed in price is moronic since theyre not even retro yet, but it is what it is
It still does, some random TV show doesn't change reality.
>It still does
It doesn't. I go out all the time. It doesn't sell for $40 but it sells for more than a dollar...
>Super Potato. It's a tourist shop.
Why is this such a tourist shop?
I was there on my trip and was disgusted with the prices, if I wanted to get ripped off like that I could do it on Ebay from home with games actually in my language.
It's not even some pretty store or whatever.
It's kind of tucked away and if I didn't already know about it from online, I wouldn't have found it.
The arcade section of it was trash, like complete doodoo, especially considering the litany of really good arcades in Akihabara, let alone in the rest of Tokyo.
Super Potato was booty, dunno why people go there or recommend it.
>Super Potato was booty, dunno why people go there or recommend it.
Probably a holdover from the early days of relaying stories on the internet about shopping for old games in Japan; pretty sure I remember reading gaijin stories about going to Super Potato even back in the early 2000s, when it likely had better prices. Other people probably read similar accounts, went there themselves, relayed their own stories, and the cycle continued, to the point that "retrogame shopping at Super Potato" became a meme rite of passage for any foreign gamer visiting Japan. Maybe Super Potato actually had the best selection and presentation back then, or maybe it was just total chance that some travelers happened to pick Super Potato as the gaming store to write about a couple decades ago, and if they'd chosen any other store, that one would've become the designated tourist trap retrogame shop.
>Why are youtuber shops tourist traps?
Literally no one has been able to figure out why
I enjoyed my Super Potato visit. Picked up a couple of IIDX games on PS2, plus they had dodonpachi running on a cab upstairs.
>I enjoyed my tourist fleecing
Good tourist. Love gaijin a ok this shop.
No, normies like you ruin things. Go emulate if you want to play the game for free.
Filthy gaijins ruined the jp retro market by buying copies of popular games enmasse to resell back at home, even RPGs, which are destined to become shelf decorations because obviously neither them nor their prospective buyers can fricking read them.
Ecelebs played a big part too, with their "check my epic Akihabara retro haul!" style garbage videos.
God, I hate obnoxious gaijins.
Are you done crying?
Scalper detected
I'm a collector. I own some now very expensive games and hardware from multiple decades multiple platforms. I detest people like you who just want to get things for free. You're able to play all of these games for free, right now. You're only crying because you want these games to resell your self. I don't resell hardly anything. I'm still collecting to this day. I just change what I buy because I'm not paying crazy prices, but you won't see me crying about it like a little b***h like you do.
>I'm a collector
So you don't even play video games, you just take pleasure in knowing that what you own is rare or expensive
>DUDE YOU BUY BOOKS? YOU ARE JUST A COLLECTOR YOU DONT EVEN READ THEM
Not that anon, but thats a tard tier cope you just made.
The moment you identify as a "collector" before anything else there's no way you've played half of your games for more than an hour
Im not using the term "gamer" to describe myself in current year, sorry.
Yes, you're a sophisticated electronic toy collector
Right? Any more I like what I like and I try not to worry about other "Gamers" or collectors. If I worried about it too much I'd start feeling too ashamed to even keep what I've collected already. The whole modern crowd takes all of the fun out of it. There's no sense of community for people that just like finding new games to play and building a collection over the years as a hobby. Everything has to be a BIG DEAL. Drama drama drama...
I like that I've gotten back all the games I liked growing up. I like that I've built up a very nice collection of games I would have loved to had growing up with too. The pure aesthetic of some of these Mega Drive games puts me over the moon. The culture the developers cultivated and surrounded them selves with as they made ground breaking games. That's what I like. That's what I collect.
>So you don't even play video games
Could you go sperg out somewhere else? I have an AV Famicom hooked up to a 14'' crt on my desk as I'm typing this. I just bought the damn thing for $65 a couple weeks ago so I could properly use the Famicom N8 I've had for years.
All people like you do is cry for handouts. Go play all the games you want for free. You don't see collectors like me crying like a b***h over the price of MUSHA or Robo Aleste. Which I don't have either of those games, and I probably never will.
you are such a homosexual please ROPE
>You don't see collectors like me crying like a b***h over the price
we see them crying and complaining all the time like OPgay complaining of the low price of a game,or others liek you complaining of emulators and rom piracy ruined the bubble i meant market so the price is lower then what it should be.
>I'm a scalper
that's all i was able to read,now will you die in this moment.
and is called scalping,no matter how you justify yourself,old tech is old tech and will never change.
Tell have you done maintainance to the tech like cleaning the boards,removing dust and resoldering everything to keep it working to justify the value you are charging.
>I'm a scalper
I'm sure you are. Since they're the only people that care what collectors do. I have boxes of that I've bought. I have boxes of shit from my childhood. You will continue to seethe.
are you so new to this land mate.
scalpers are cancer same as collectors
>look at me i have this game mass produced and i am selling it as something that was made in limited quantities some dumb gay will pay money for it,no it doesn't work but has sentimental value which increases price.
most of those "collector" stuff in shelves are rotting right now because they don't give maintainance to the equipments.
i still haven't seen a collector selling something that has been maintained perfectly and is still in working state
>bought original snes
>the guy used chemicals to make it look as new
>most of the parts were rotten and with mold
>didn't work
>ask refund and get it back
>send a video to the guy breaking the shit he sent
i do that with any piece of shit collectors sell.
You have a mental illness. If you're this obsessed about it I suggest you find a new hobby. This isn't healthy.
>This isn't healthy.
Indeed. Rage replying to a bunch of random people for the (You)s is a sure sign of mental illness.
No one's buying up the japanese version of the GAMES to sell in the western market. They're buying up the japanese version of the CONSOLES to sell to the western market.
How the frick are they gonna sell these games when no one can read moon runes?
>How the frick are they gonna sell these games when no one can read moon runes?
Because 95% of jp retro games don't require any knowledge of japanese to play? And coomlectors don't play anyways, it goes straight to the display shelf - especially with popular franchises such as FF, DQ, Persona etc.
Normies didnt ruin the hobby. Even if every nignog into retro to the point they wanted to actually own jap copies were to buy a copy, it still would barely have made an indent in their back story if they were buying directly from Japan. There would be plenty to go around for nostalgic nips and gaijin fricks that still would not be the equivalent to the total copies sold back when these games were new. The issue is the reseller buying 50 copies of a game just to resell it at jacked up prices. Some vacationer buying one copy isnt making a difference. Someone buying as much as they can carry, will.
Likewise, actual Japs are willing to sell directly to foreign markets so of course people are going to buy it up. Its not "stealing stock" when they are willing to package it up carefully along with a thank you note and shit it to your address. If they want to go get mad at someone, they can start on their own home turf.
>Some vacationer buying one copy isnt making a difference
Thousands of vacationers buying upba copy every day for years and years IS making a difference. Even the Japanese government commented on it. Just take the L.
>Even the Japanese government commented on it
Uh yeah, the resellers buying multiple copies. It was never an issue until the retro boom and people realized they could buy and resell the shit for 5 times what its worth. Even if its one person buyine 1 copy over decades, its still not coming close to the amount being bought up in bulk if you compare which group is exporting the greater amount of copies. The lone buyers are still drops in the bucket compared to resellers.
It's not just the resellers you dunce. There are less copies on the domestic market because they're being carried across the border by the fricking thousands. The resellers are a part of that but also the problem is that there's just less fricking games available.
Never said it was just the resellers, tard. If the resellers were not in the picture and it was just 1 person buying 1 copy it would still not be that bad. Would their be less copies? Sure. But it would not be to the degree like it is now. Going off of Pokemon games, you have what, millions of copies in Japan alone that were sold? That same million of copies is not going to be going back into the hands of millions of people interested in a copy. Even if every "retro gamer" wanted a copy world-wide, as in the people who actually have enough interest to want to import a copy of a game they probably cant even read, in addition to the ones that can read it, its still not going to suck up all of those millions of copies that are still floating around for resale in Japan. Now, if instead of every 1 copy per 1 person, its 50 copies per person, scrounging up every copy they can spend their English teaching check on in every store they can hit in a 5 mile radius, yes, that will speed up the process significantly more. As others have also said, its the hyping up collecting these games to people who had no initial interest to do so before as well that has only fueled resellers to buy even more copies because they are going to sell and they wont be sitting on stock for long. So yes, maybe in 2050, if every individual person visiting Japan was buying up a copy of Pokemon red, maybe by then it would have become an issue, but the resellers are 90% of the problem for any nip who is upset about dwindling stock.
>If the resellers were not in the picture and it was just 1 person buying 1 copy it would still not be that bad.
THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ARE COMING AND BUYING COPIES AND GOING HOME. EVERY SINGLE DAY. They don't just shop at Super Potato you moron, they go to Hard Off, random flea markets and everywhere else.
A lot of retro games didn't get huge print runs like modern games. Sure some stuff like pokemon sold in the millions but for a lot of these games there's a very real chance that most of the domestic stock could disappear in just a few years.
>the resellers are 90% of the problem
They are a part of the problem, but they are not 90% of the problem.
>THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ARE COMING AND BUYING COPIES AND GOING HOME. EVERY SINGLE DAY.
That's not happening. At all. You're imagining things about something you're clearly very very obsessed with.
Yes it is! Even the government commented on it! That's literally why the national archive is starting to archive games! Just because you say something isn't happening doesn't mean it's not happening you moron.
>Even the government commented on it!
Maybe you should take a break from these old games if it bothers you this much.
>They are a part of the problem, but they are not 90% of the problem.
Yes they are. it's exactly the same thing that's happening in e.g. the TCG market with games like MtG. So-called "investors" are buying up 90% of the supply driving prices to the moon intentionally. It's pretty obvious if you look at price development, i.e. not organically but in sudden spikes. Do you think in 2021 everyone just magically realized "Gee, Sliver Queen is a really great card"? And it's the same with basically all kinds of pop cultural collectibles, including vidya, because these markets are relatively easy to manipulate (you don't need to be the Wolf of Wall Street to buy 100 copies of a snes game).
Plus, there are a lot of manchildren out there deluding themselves that they are making a "financial investment" while "buying what they love" - kind of a have your cake and eat it delusion typical of half-wits who are too dumb and/or lazy to educate themselves on finance stuff for responsible adults - people that would rather max out 10 credit cards to buy loose copies of earthbound. This shit happens all the time in MtG: "Hey Rudy, love the channel, I spent my kid's college fund on 5000 copies of Baron Sengir and now the card went down 30% and I have to move out of the house. How can this be?" Sadly, this also seems to be a uniquely American phenomenon. Japanese people just don't do this. Why? Genes? Education? Nature or nurture - the great debate.
Yeah, I just emulate now and I’ve moved on to only hobbies I can easily cost control: working out, coding, reading, watching old movies, cooking, etc
Every possible industry where you would be inclined to collect is going through this right now. If you have the financial freedom to ignore that fact more power to you, but it gets harder and harder to justify for me.
>Japanese people just don't do this. Why? Genes? Education? Nature or nurture - the great debate.
Most Japanese people simply don't have space for 500 copies of the same game inside their house, for one. The reason Japanese market is better than USA is because Japanese people: 1) have to give away, trade away or sell off their games frequently because of space contraints; 2) generally treat their stuff with care so fewer copies get lost or destroyed with careless handling.
Source: your butthole
Tell me how to store 500 copies of the same game inside a 25m^2 flat and still have space to live there, homosexual.
There's lots of "hidden" storage space, even in small apartments, and more economical use of space in general. 500 snes games is definitely not a problem. Japanese collect stuff too, y'know.
You keep spouting this nonsense but have provided absolutely no evidence
I WILL be buying your games and I WILL be inflating your prices and there is NOTHING you can do about it
>open ebay store
>list Japanese games
>send Chinese fake covered in a harmful substance
>you get package
>open it
>unwrap game
>get substance on your hands before you realize it's a fake
Frick around and find out.
>It's this seething nip again
Yeah yeah big talk, now package up my games
Drink bleach, importer scum.
Nah I think I'll buy some more of your games instead
>Normies have ruined this hobby
How? You can pirate every single game released on most consoles with a couple clicks of your mouse. You can then play those games in an emulator, or put the on a flashcart for your consoles. Why the frick are you buying retro video games?
Fat Americans ruining glorious Japan.
*Fat Man
idk man a hobby's a hobby
Crack would be cheaper, though.
Am I supposed to feel bad for Japan? I’m not Japanese. Life isn’t fair. sorry you can’t buy your plastic junk, emulate like everyone else who also has to deal with inflated prices.
You morons are literally so gay and wapanese mindbroken that you’re acting like a Japanese defense force online for a country that not only doesn’t know or care you exist, but would probably be repulsed by you in person.
is the normal price of old stuff
>but muuhhh nostalgia gives it value
and is only sentimental value for a mass produced game
is called used goods for a reason.
why should i pay 400 dollars for an old used game when i can get it cheap.
Status
>that countdown timer in the upper left
EVERY TIME
>Twitch reaction channels
They were always ahead of the times.
A lot of time it is just due to ignorance. Decades ago I was at a Gamestop with my friend and his (now wife) and she saw some Namco collection with Pac Man for PS2 and wanted to buy it. It's like, you're going to pay $20+ to pay Pac Man in this day and age? She would have because she didn't know emulation existed. Many such cases.
>hobby
Buying shit is not a hobby, you soulless consoomer.
These days people think eating at restaurants is a hobby. This doesn't surprise me.
I wish more people understood this. Nobody cares what you bought, nobody cares what you own.
What doesn't surprise me is morons bumping shit threads instead of, ya'know, reporting?
Nothing to report, stupid. It's a /vr/ thread even if it's a bad one.
I don't support cancel culture. OP has a right to post his video game thoughts without being censored.
>Normies
Outed yourself, Zoomer tourist.
>noooooooo you have to use the longer informal word over shorter informal word!
You Black folk are so stupid. You act like Ganker is Twitter, thinking you'll get banhammered for saying no-no words. That why you come up with shitty meme phrases like "Safe horny", "coomer" and "normie", frickin' baby.
>Reporting low quality threads is considered "cancel culture"
You are what's ruining the site and this board. Have fun being old news, pushed out by Zoomers and Gen AlphaBlack folk in the coming years where everything is Gen 6 discussion and above.
Just steal it out of the store if you want to save the hobby.
>Why do people pay such moronic prices?
Because they're children who want old toys. Just like you. Except not poorgay.
Because they don't want to pay for tofu dregs until they leave the country of Taiwan alone.
I just use flashcarts/roms. I'm going to Japan soon and want to find a GB Micro, since they're cheaper there and me using Pounds makes it even cheaper. Random shops in Akihabara, mainly underground ones or Radio Kaikan should have good deals.
gb micros are such a meme. AMAZING build quality but moronic form factor
you're the very first person I've seen say that, which makes me think you're just a moron
I got an SP-001, also want to find a 101 and the Micro will be a beater I'll take to work and everywhere else
instead of talking you're jumping straight to insults.
it's not an insult, it's being realistic
When the Micro came out I thought it looked dumb. I've since come around to the form factor, but I still can't get over it having a smaller screen.
maybe you just need glasses. it's not good for text based games, but everything else is perfectly fine
>emulate
>if I can’t emulate it I don’t play it
>modchipped switch and pc
>jailbroken ps4
Wala
>can you send this game over pacific ocean for me at x price
>はい!
isnt there somebody you forgot to ask?
>nice korekushon you have there gaijin-chan
>now witness the true power of Japanese collector