As with virtually every Japan trip, I’m spending a lot of time in the many retro game stores. Unlike previous trips, I haven’t yet purchased anything! I will since my Wizardry collection is nearly complete and the few remaining games I don’t have are very elusive. It’s still fun to look:
When I purchased the above Wizardry Empire game over five years ago (on 1/13/19 to be precise) I paid ¥2700. It’s now over ten times more expensive! This is just one of many examples of how retro game prices have skyrocketed in recent years.
It used to be notable to see even a single game in a shop over ¥100000 (about $630 in today’s money) and now they are common. The above shelf for instance contains seven Famicom (NES) games, none of which are under $1000. And then I saw this yesterday:
As someone who has made good money selling his collection during this market, and turning around and spending some of that money on Wizardry games, these prices astonish me. This Battle Formula game is about $3600, which is probably more than the cost of the entire vacation of most people walking into the store. Who’s paying these prices?
It’s definitely not to play the games. These days you can play them all for ‘free’ via emulation. Those buying them are doing so because their collections are as deep as their pockets, and owning them makes them happy. Or perhaps they’re buying them as investments (which I think is unwise since surely this market will drop?). Either way, retro games are the new antiques.
The prices of game consoles is continually rising as well, and $400 for an unboxed Game Boy micro without a power cable would have been silly a few years back. I have the boxed version of the above. I bet it’s worth a lot more 🙂
Enough with prices, let’s look at some rare stuff. The red and white keyboard in the above pic is for the Famicom and came with a basic cartridge that Nintendo released over 40 years ago now. The keyboard is apparently very rare these days, and the above wasn’t for sale. (The other item is an MSX computer, also not for sale.)
Here’s a lovely boxed game for the X68000 computer. Largely known for its near-perfect arcade game conversions it was also a full-featured home computer with ports of a few western games including the first Might & Magic. I was strangely tempted to buy this but controlled myself.
And here we have all three boxed Brandish games for the PC88 (another Japanese home computer). These are large boxes with beautiful cover art by Jun Suemi and these will be treasures in someone’s collection. I wish it was mine 🙂
Here’s a curiosity: a Japanese hint guide for an NES port of the old Firebird computer game Druid (a fun Gauntlet clone). This is such a weirdly specific and unusual item, and just the sort of thing I love seeing in the retro shops.
And to end this post, how about an ultimate retro game collectible: an original Galaga arcade board! It’s ‘only’ about $300, but it is original to 1981 and is a piece of video game history 🙂