Retro Gaming Guide to Akihabara in Tokyo

May 10, 2014 by stopXwhispering

I’ve recently come back from a two week vacation in Tokyo, I went there with 5 other friends and we had a blast! ^_^

While in Tokyo I took the opportunity to go hunting for some retro games of course! I’ve been to Tokyo quite some times now, but I’ve only ever found Super Potato where I could buy retro games. This time however I got a friend from instagram to show me around Akihabara to all the best retro game shops! ^_^
Here’s a map I’ve made of the places I went to:

The two Sega buildings that I pinned on the map are easy to find. After you take the Akihabara Electric Town Exit just go right, out into a square, if you look to your left you will see the first giant SEGA building:

Once you get closer to it you will see the second SEGA building as well:

SUPER POTATO

So first off is Super Potato, this place is a bit pricey, but it’s a must-go for all retro gaming enthusiasts! It’s located on the street behind the two SEGA buildings. It’s kind of hard to find the entrance since it’s quite small and you won’t really see the signs for it unless you look up (or can read japanese). It’s down on this street, I’ve located it with a circle, however if you go on the route of the map it will be on your right side instead of left.

This is the building:

You will have to go into a corridor and take the elevator up:

Super Potato has 4 floors, first floor is mainly cartridge games (famicom, super famicom, sega master system, mega drive, pc engine, game boy etc). Second floor has some newer games like playstaytion, dreamcast etc. The third floor has mainly strategy guides to retro games and the fourth floor has retro arcade machines where you can play puyo puyo, pac-land, final fight, ghosts n’ goblins and a bunch of other old classics ^_^ Everything is very neatly displayed and they also have a bunch of merchandise.
One thing that bugs me about Super Potato is that they have two giant shelves filled from top to bottom with famicom games and most of them are doubles. You will see the same game 10 times in a row sometimes, it makes it hard going through it all.. and time consuming. They have however put end labels on the plastic wrap of each game, but it’s written in japanese.

MANDARAKE COMPLEX

Next up is Mandarake Complex, I didn’t spend too much time here, but they had loads of retro games at reasonable prices! And so many boxed games in great condition ^_^ I saw a mint CiB Recca and I really wanted to buy it, but that game is almost just as expensive in Japan as it is on eBay… :( At Mandarake Complex all the games were in hard plastic cases, it made it a bit dull to look through it all, and hard to spot the games you were looking for..

They also had an assortment of Neo Geo games, I really would like to start collecting for that system, but damn those games are pricey! The most expensive one I saw was 220.000 Yen, which is over 2000 USD… o_O

MANDARAKE GALAXY

I did however spend more time at another Mandarake store in Nakano (Nakano is just one stop from Shinjuku station with the JR line, or three stops if you don’t take the chuo rapid line). (Note that this store is NOT located in Akihabara and not pinned on the map above..). Mandarake Galaxy is located on the second floor inside Nakano Broadway, a mall that is just straight ahead after exiting the station.

This one wasn’t very big but they made use of their space by only displaying one of each game instead of triples (like in Super Potato). Their games were also really neatly displayed in a way that you could easily browse through them ^^ And it was very reasonably priced! :D This is how happy I was at the Mandarake Galaxy store in Nakano ^_^

They had a lot of gems and I bought loads of games here, including Gimmick! ^_^ They also had another cabinet inside where they had stuff that wasn’t for sale, just for show >-< Like the Sega Mega Drive Tetris!!

TRADER

Next up is Trader in Akihabara, this is located just a bit further down the street from the two SEGA buildings.

Just like in the Mandarake Complex in Akihabara this store had all it’s cartridges and boxed games in plastic cases. This makes it kind of hard to browse through loose Famicom carts.. I bought a few games here though.

I found a boxed Altered Beast for Game Boy Advance, I regret not getting it since it was so cheap >_< 3500 Yen is approximately 34 USD…

They also had a bin filled with loose carts that all cost under 100 Yen! The cheapest I found was 19 Yen, which is less than 20 cents ^_^ There was no guarantee that they would work though. However, all the five games I found in the bin has worked perfectly ^_^

You could also get Neo Geo games here and other rarities. However they were not displayed, only by advertisements all over the walls. I guess you would have to go to a counter to order them.

FRIENDS

Now the last shop my friends took me too was so cute! It was run by this old lady and her husband, and it was called FRIENDS ^__^

It was very small, but it was crammed with retro games! ^_^ And it was mostly very cheap :) It was really easy to browse through the Famicom carts, and they also had a bunch of bins filled with cheaper carts, around 100 Yen.

Apparently there was also a second floor, I didn’t have time to see it though. I was told they had Sega Saturn games and stuff like that upstairs.

I would recommend all of these shops for retro game collectors that visit Tokyo ^_^

And if you’re not into buying games, there are also loads of places to just play games! :D Here’s my post about the Arcades of Akihabara ^_^

Retrospelsmässan 2014 (Sweden’s retro gaming exhibition)

May 4, 2014 by stopXwhispering

So I just got back from Tokyo 3 days ago and I’m still a bit jet lagged, and also very sick >.< But I refused to miss out on 2014’s RSM (Retrospelsmässan), Sweden’s yearly retro gaming exhibition in Gothenburg. So I drove there yesterday to see what they had to offer.

The setup was similar to last year, the biggest improvement though was that they had more registers at the entrance (6 instead of 1 or 2 last year) so the massive queues went a lot faster (but they were still there). Last year I waited almost 4 hours before I could get in, this year it took a little more than one hour.

The last 1/5 part of the queuing

There were as usual loads of cosplayers running around. It’s always nice to see ^_^ Here’s a few of the characters I managed to capture on camera:

It’s a me! Mario!

Street Fighter and Kingdom Hearts cosplay

My personal favorite: Wheatley from Portal ^_^ Brilliant!

Zelda & Link cosplay

At the fair there were loads of things to do. They had competitions, hundreds of systems, arcades and pinball machines setup to be played, artwork being made and sold, speedruns, street fighter tournaments, traders selling retro games and stuff and lots more.

And Charles Martinet was there (the voice of Mario & friends) and you could get his signature…

…which I did ^_^ He was very friendly and funny :)

I came in quite late since I had to drive for 2 hours to get there, so I didn’t have time to browse around a lot through the games. I also think that most of the good stuff had already been picked out, but I did manage to find a few things :) I found Sunset Riders for Sega Mega Drive, Wolfchild and Prince of Persia for Sega Mega CD. I’ve been curious about the Mega CD version of Wolfchild ever since I made the review for Wolfchild on Master System. I found it disturbing that the game lacked music, then someone told me that the Mega CD version had music, so I had to hear it ^_^ Sunset Riders has also been on my radar for some time but it has always been so pricey on eBay. I got it for approximately 40 GBP (or 69 USD).

I also found a mysterious Famicom pirate game which had no name, just an image of Tetris and airplanes?! So I had to buy it to see what it would be like ^_^

It turned out to be just Tetris, but I haven’t seen a Tetris that looks exactly like this one before. It had loads of gameplay options like 1 player, 2 player, cooperative, versus etc.

It also had loads of russian songs to choose from ^_^ Troika is my favorite :D

That’s it for now, soon i’ll make a big post about all my pickups in Japan, and also a small guide of Akihabara’s great assortment of retro game shops ^_^ But first I will have to sort out this mess on my desk of over 100 games that I bought during my 2 weeks there… o_O

If you wanna know more about Retrospelsmässan check out their webpage, you can also read about my visit to last year’s RSM here >>

Go Go Power Rangers! …for Famicom

February 26, 2014 by stopXwhispering

I’ve still been collecting and gaming a lot the last couple of months, and my latest addition that arrived in the mail today was two Power Rangers games for Famicom! I’ve seen both of these occationally as pirated copies, and I actually never thought they really existed as released games. Until I bumped into the originals from a japanese seller on eBay ^_^ I bought them instantly because I’ve always wanted to know what they would be like, and I assumed they would be platforming games, which I love!

The first one is called Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger, and this one is not too good.. but they definitely made an effort!

It’s a platforming game, but the controls are a bit slow, unresponsive and stiff. You can collect orbs and when your meter fills you get a scene with the machine/animal the Power Ranger can transform into, but I tried every possible combination of buttons and did not manage to transform >_<

Then I reached a boss and 4 hits kill you even though you have a much larger power meter than just 4 bars.. deceiving! After reaching Game Over I gave up, it just wasn’t any fun..

However, they have 3 bonus games you can play, some are even 2 player! The first one is some kind of quiz where you get three answers to choose from. This is all in Japanese and I don’t really know that much facts about Power Rangers anyway ;D

The second one is a kind of Pong game, this can be played in VS.

In the third one you throw a bomb between you and the monster and who ever holds it when it explodes looses. You can hold it for a little while but if you hold it too long it also explodes even though the time limit isn’t up.

These extra games are nothing special, they should have put more effort into making the platforming experience better instead!

The second Power Ranger game is called Choujin Sentai Jetman. This game was much more fun! It’s also a platformer, and if felt way more like the series I remember from my childhood.

First you run around as the human form Power Rangers, and you can choose from the 5 different ones. The Grey and Red one have swords which kills enemies with 1 or 2 hits. The Pink and Blue one have some type of long range gun, but it takes 2 or 3 hits to kill enemies though. The Yellow Power Ranger has a short range blow that is similar to the sword.

There are 5 various stages to choose freely from.

At the end of each stage you reach a boss, and this is when your Power Ranger transforms!

Then you get to fight the monster in a kind of beat ’em up / fighting style battle. This gets quite easy once you learn the patterns of the bosses and how to block in time ^_^

After all 5 stages there’s a 6th Last Stage.

The boss on this stage was hard if you tried to have time to block, I eventually just went all in punching him and managed to get more blows in than he did ^_^

This games was quite easy, but fun nonetheless :) And the music wasn’t all that bad either ^^

Retro Rumble 2013!

December 15, 2013 by stopXwhispering

My Retro Room has once more been improved, it’s bigger and better and now twice the size of my last room! Once I had finished the moving and decorations of the new room I had retro gaming party to fully inaugurate it! I hosted a retro gaming competition, my friend NinjaBrite set up a music quiz with a retro gaming theme and there were loads of people playing loads of games! I am extremely happy that well over 30 people showed up :D

In the competition the following games were played: Hector ’87 / Famicom, Ninja Spirit / PC Engine, Musha Aleste / Sega Mega Drive, BPS Tetris / Famicom, and Halo / Xbox 360. I know the last one is not very retro, but since my boyfriend only plays this one game he thought it would be fun to add it in the competition to see how many kills the contestants could get playing against him ;D (the most amount of kills one person got was 3..).

Halo VS ShyachooMiik
© Jens Andreasson

Halo Finals
© Björn Jensen

Björn Soraheart playing Ninja Spirit on PC Engine
© x MissDeLuxe x

Me and NinjaBrite keeping scores ^_^ © x MissDeLuxe x

NinjaBrite and me keeping scores ^_^
© x MissDeLuxe x

Fluffeth & Dansken gaming
© x MissDeLuxe x

There were a total of 26 contestants! Ranging from people who are total gamers that work with games to people that haven’t played since they were kids, but the competition was still pretty even!

Gaming at Retro Rumble
© x MissDeLuxe x

Gaming at Retro Rumble
© Jens Andreasson

Gaming on the iCade
© Jens Andreasson

In the semi-finals four contestants battled each other in three different games on the Super Famicom: Bomberman, V.S Collection and Battle Cross. The two finalists that made it to the end had a stand off in Fatman for the Mega Drive! This was hilarious to watch since the controls are awful in this game and the hit detection is incredibly glitchy!! haha so it gave them both an equal chance ^_^

Semi-finals at Retro Rumble, Horsefacekillah VS TGMaduin VS Zicsoen and Markisen (not pictured)

Finals in Fatman, TGMaduin vs Markisen
© x MissDeLuxe x

Markisen VS TGMaduin

Christian came out victorious, but all the finalists got prizes ^^

Winner Markisen
© x MissDeLuxe x

Markisen with his prize ^_^ © Jens Andreasson

Markisen with his prize consisting of game related movies, bit quiz board game and other stuff ^_^
© Jens Andreasson

Through a projector on the wall people could also try out the incredibly frustrating and renowned to be impossible game: Cat Mario! This was a great hit, since people kept cheering each other on and tried to beat more and more stages. For every stage that was beaten I handed out a mini-prize to the person that made it ^^ Eventually at the end of the evening the game had actually been beaten through a collective effort :D (For those of you who have never played this game, I suggest you give it a go! It’s a lot of fun ^_^)

Cat Mario

Wobbly Mint Flava playing Cat Mario

We also got a cosplayer on Retro Rumble! Jocke went all in dressing up as the Hitman! It was amazing!! ^_^

Jocke as Hitman. look at that precious suitcase filled with strangling cord, dual revolvers and a gun with a silencer!
© Jens Andreasson

Here are some more pictures from the evening that I was given from some of the friends that were there:

Welcome to Retro Rumble sign
© x MissDeLuxe x

Bead art station at Retro Rumble
© Jens Andreasson

Parts of my new Retro Game Room
© Jens Andreasson

x MissDeLuxe x & Fluffeth © x MissDeLuxe x

Duck Hunt & Zapper Corner © x MissDeLuxe x

Markisen & x MissDeLuxe x solving the Music Quiz © Jens Andreasson

The Amazing Music Quiz put together by NinjaBrite © x MissDeLuxe x

Thanks everyone for joining in! I hope I’ll see you all again for Retro Rumble 2014! :D
(p.s. I will make a guided tour of my new Retro Room soon..) ;D

Meanwhile, here’s a movie I put together with all the clips I got from some of the guests ^_^ Enjoy!

GAME ON 2.0 in Stockholm

November 30, 2013 by stopXwhispering

Me & NinjaBrite went to visit one of our gaming girls in Stockholm and took the opportunity to visit the gaming exhibition Game On 2.0! This was awesome! And us girls had a blast ^_^


NinjaBrite	stopXwhispering	x MissDeLuxe x

This gaming exhibition is held in the Technical Museum of Stockholm, so we made sure to visit a few other attractions there as well, like the distorted mirrors :D and the gift shop haha ^_^

They had a lot of retro gaming stuff, both old arcades on display and a bunch of systems, some that are quite rare! Like the Sega Wondermega! There were over 100 games that could be played, it was a really nice setup ^_^ Unfortunately you could only visit for a limited time, since they had so many visitors a day that they had to make sure new people got to go in and see it as well. I think it was only about an hour or two before you had to leave :( But we had time to see most things and try a few things out ^_^

They also had an impressive display of portable gaming consoles! :D

There were also some original artwork for some games, straight from the studios that made them. Games like Tomb Rider, Donkey Kong, Super Mario, Dragon’s Lair, World of Warcraft etc..

And also there were some old game advertisments framed on the wall :)

The last room contained a bunch of original arcade cabinets! This was awesome ^_^ You could try out loads of things, both new and old, like Galaga, Pacman Plus, Donkey Kong, Tron, Mappy and lots more ^_^

The exhibition is there until the 27th of April 2014, so if anyone is in Stockholm I suggest you visit it!

OMFG SFC overload!!

November 10, 2013 by stopXwhispering

In the last month A LOT of Super Famicom games have arrived in the mail… and I’m still waiting for more to arrive ;D

I’m super happy about Cotton 100%!! I paid around $160 USD for it, but it was complete even with a tiny music CD and in great condition ^_^ I’ll make another post about this game itself soon :)

Doremi Fantasy!! I’m so happy to have it! And it’s an amazingly cute little platformer ^_^ I’ll make a post about this one too soon!

Dai Makaimura is awesome ^_^ the sequel to Makaimura which is also a great game! It’s quite different from the Sega Mega Drive game with the same name, I’ll make a comparison in a later post :)

I looove Final Fight, so I just assumed Final Fight 2 would be just as good, and it was :D

I also went and got Final Fight Guy, I haven’t tried it out yet, but from the looks of it I think it’s a fighting game and not a beat’em up :( But at least there’s a mini CD in the box! :D

I had never heard of Dino Wars, but when people started bidding on it, I’m not the one that quits.. that just makes me want something even more ;D It’s a really fun platform game where you ride a dinosaur! :D

Hansei Zaru Jiro-kun no Daibouken, a very cute puzzle type platform game where you have to collect keys to enter the next stage. In the beginning I found it very childishly easy and didn’t think much of it, until it started getting quite tricky! :D

Poi Poi Poitto!! Looks awesome!! And I bought it only for the cover, since I love puzzle games, but it’s actually not that fun.. shit keeps happening and I don’t understand why.. Like I’m about to win, and then WHAM shit just falls down without the opposing player even doing anything! It’s a game that doesn’t like winners >_<

Super Gussun Oyoyo! This puzzle platformer is fun, but I prefer pure puzzle games… if I get stuck I give up >_< …. which I did ;D

Super Back to the Future Part II!! :D Check out my post about it here >>

Ranma 1/2, I thought this was a fighting game and almost didn’t buy it at first. But at a second glance at the back I got super excited to find out it’s a PUZZLE GAME! :D So I had to get it ;D It’s really unique! In the beginning I didn’t get it, I tried to match colours and pictures on the blocks, until I realized that it’s a Janken game! (Rock Paper Scissors) So if you have a stack of stone hands you have to throw a paper hand on it for them to disappear :) It’s really tricky to try to beat the computer who is awesome.. but as a two player games it works great :D

Rockman X2! Rockman is always awesome ^_^ Now I have Rockman X, Rockman X2 and Rockman X3 :D still on the lookout for more Rockman games ^__^

Konami is my favorite game company <3 I’ve never really understood the Goemon games though, sometimes they’re a fun platformer and sometimes they’re just weird.. but this was the first one I tried for Super Famicom and it rocks! You run around beating ninjas with your stick and you can ride on a fish and much much more! :)

I also found Ganbare Goemon 3, so now I’m just looking for the first one as well ^__^ Fun platformers!

Keeper was an interesting puzzle game and very cute ^_^ You run around in a square as a little keeper and you push blocks to match them, new blocks keep appearing though so you will easily get stuck and when the board is filled it’s game over.

SuperFamicomGuy recommended Thunder Spirits so I had to get it ^_^ and he was right, it’s a totally “belted” game ;D (did I use that correctly?)

Syvalion was another shooter I bought straight from Japan through the Mandarake shops online! I haven’t tried this one out yet, but I’m thinking it will be great ^____^

The Mickey Mouse games on the Famicom are just as great as the Sega Mega Drive ones :) I’m trying to catch them all ;D

I’m not really that into fighting games, but I got these three in a lot on eBay and it can always be fun to have since a lot of my friends enjoy playing them ^_^

I also got curious about Sailor Moon, I heard there were a few really good ones, and I got confused when looking through them all on eBay.. so I just ended up buying them all ;D