Black plastic cases

[manuel]

Damn, my GEO doesn't have Famicom games any more. 
But I got some 30 Yen games a while back... can I high five, too? 

[tappybot]

High Fives for everyone! 

My GEO has since extinguished it's retro section, which makes me sad..  But don't think it's the end... A friend alerted me, maybe last month, to a GEO near his house that had recently got a new shipment of retro games.... Of course, much of it was crap, but there were some decent, and dare I say, great games in there for 50yen. Wahoo! I got a never before seen (by my eyes) Famicom game which I think is called 'Prince Banana'.

Just think, they have to send those retro games somewhere...

senseiman, it's the strength and durability of the black cases that appeal to me.  The KOEI ones are pretty big..  Do you like the Namcot cases?


Oh, while I'm thinking of it, I have to say, I really love that cardboard boxes for retro games here DON'T have slits in the flaps.  For some reason, every modern cardboard box product has slits in the flaps, which makes it so you can't actually open the box without crunching or bending the cardboard flap.  These old Famicom/Super Famicom/Gameboy, etc, boxes open so smoothly!

Curse every manufacturer who puts SLITS in the FLAPS.

[senseiman]

Manuel:  High five!!!  30 yen game is a snap!

tappybot:  Yeah, the plastic ones are definitely more durable.  My objection to them (namcot ones too) are purely aesthetic.  I like the look of the cardboard ones way better.

About GEO, I've been semi-tracking the slow demise of their Famicom (and general retro game) section at my local shops here in Fukuoka for the past year on my blog.  If you were in the right time at the right place you could score some amazing bargains.  About a year ago they marked everything down 50%.  There were some decent deals then (I got Burger Time during that phase of the sale) but nothing dramatically cheap.

Then in June was when the real rush hit.  Everything for 100 yen.  They still had tons of "good" games then that you could score but literally within about 3 days everything good was gone.  I know because I went to EVERY GEO in Fukuoka (think they have 7 or 8, I forget) during that 3 day period and got tons of stuff.  I picked up Super Contra, Mike Tyson's Punch Out and a bunch of other games were originally priced in the 2,000-3,000 yen range then.  Made a post about one of my outings here:

http://famicomblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/more-than-half-way-there-now.html

Then in the fall they marked everything down to 50 yen, but there wasn' t much left by then.  I did a post a couple months surveying the selection at one of my local ones then:

http://famicomblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/fukuoka-famicom-shops-ii-decline-and.html

Glad to hear that they still get some stuff in, though I imagine they must be just clearing out old stock from a warehouse or something.  The ones in Fukuoka are pretty much all "dead", unless you are looking for Maj-jong or Pachinko games!

[jpx72]

I know because I went to EVERY GEO in Fukuoka

Yeah, that's exactly what I would do if I were you or if I live in Japan
Anyway, you wrote a pretty big and informative blog topic about it - good reading and great photos !

[tappybot]

Ooooh man, Super C for 100 yen.   Oh geez, I'm so jealous.  I noticed this stuff all too late and basically picked from left overs at GEOs and what appears to be a sister company, Media Pocket (same stickers and promotional materials).  Actually, I came to Japan in July, so I was late from the get go.

Yeah, that shipment from the restocked GEO could have been the remaining stash of a number of other GEOs, or some forgotten stock.


And I must agree, those stickers come off so easily....  and Hard Off... well, let's just say they live up to their name.  Ugh.  I want to know who the jerk is who puts the price right on the front sticker of the cartridge.

[senseiman]

Thanks, jpx72!

tappybot - oh you just missed out by a hair then!  It was sweet,  the first days I was buying games like 20 at a time.  Filled up huge swaths of my want-list without hurting the wallet too much.

Yeah, those Hard-Off stickers suck (live up to their name - ha!).  I don't really go there anymore, partially thanks to the dreaded "half-hour of slowly and delicately trying to peel bits of price sticker off without damaging the label" sessions that inevitably follow a purchase there.

All part of the fun of collecting I guess 

[manuel]

Same problem with many games at Hard Off here in Hiroshima, too...
Maybe this is a company policy or something? Damn idiots.

[UglyJoe]

Gamestop used to do that when they sold used NES games.  You have this massive chunk of gray plastic and you decide the best place to slap a sticker is on top of the other sticker

[senseiman]

Yeah, it would be so easy to just put the sticker on the plastic instead of the label, wouldn't it? 

One other thing I've noticed (getting a bit off topic here I suppose, sorry about that) is that some used game stores replace the back labels of Famicom carts with labels of their own.  I actually quite like some of these as they tell you something about the cart's history.  I've never actually been to a store that did this but a fair number of my carts have had this done to them at an earlier "cycle" in their lives.  I put a photo of some of the replaced back labels in this post here:

http://famicomblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/famicom-cart-condition-why-bad-is-good.html

[UglyJoe]

Nice.  I have a cart with a Topboy sticker on the back.  Their mascot looks like an Akira Toriyama knock-off

[tappybot]

Senseiman, I try to buy them in as pristine condition as possible, but you have an interesting point.

Actually, once at Hard-off, I noticed several of the Gameboy games in the junk section I was choosing all had the same name written on the back of the cart...  When I picked up several, I eventually noticed how much I liked his tastes, and suddenly I didn't mind so much that the writing was there... not only that, but I started skimming through the whole bin for any game with his name written on it.  If it was part of Yokoyama's collection, then I know it's a gonna be good. 

Some of those stickers that cover the entire back of the cartridge are obnoxious though... And they really get around..  I took a visit to Osaka over the holiday and saw some of the same stickers on the backs of cartridges I often see in Nagoya.
I actually have a few cartridges with that Green Star sticker on them, as pictured on your blog.  I got them off, though they were much more troublesome than they first appeared.

Well thank you for your point of view on the matter.  I'll keep that in mind in my future purchases

Probably worse than writing or stray stickers are smoke stains and sun fading.  I'm not a fan of that at all.

[senseiman]

Yeah, I'm more or less the same.  I usually go for the better condition carts (if there is a choice) but I'm happy to get one with a bit of wear - so long as it doesn't make the cart look bad (like torn labels, sun fading, etc).

Interesting story about the "Yokoyama collection"!  Sometimes I think about writing my name on all my carts too just so future generations will know that at one point I owned them.  I did write my name on the back of my copies of "Spelunker" and "Sqoon", which have an actual space on the back where you are supposed to write your name. 

I don't mind the big back labels, they kind of interest me.

They obviously date from a time before people viewed Famicom games as a collectible item, otherwise the shops wouldn't have put them on.  Some of these labels might date back all the way to the Famicom's original lifespan (ie when they were still releasing games for it).  So I view them as a legitimate part of Famicom history and not some form of damage.

None of them seem to be in business anymore (I did a google search for the names of the three in my blog post and you get nothing - my 2 day old blog post is the top result).  Also no retro game shop that I go to now (and I go to a lot) put that type of label on. 

They are pretty redundant though.  I mean, most of them repeat the same type of information that was on the original label in the first place.  Some of them are obviously there to advertise the store, but some don't have any indication of what store they came from.