Famicomblog

I was browsing through the Famicom listings on Yahoo Auctions yesterday when I noticed one seller, mad-masax, was without much fanfare putting up what looks like it may be one of the most impressive Famicom sales ever.

Currently he has 280 listings, each of them a different CIB Famicom game with a starting bid of 300 yen (about 3ドル). The selection he has so far is crazy, including some of the most sought after, hard to find titles out there - Battle Formula, Lickle, Moon Crystal, Gimmick, Recca, Snow Bros, Adventure Island 4, Kung Fu, Magical Doropie, etc etc. All CIB and all look like they are in (or near) top condition.

The thing that really teases me is that in the description he says he is planning to auction off a little over 1000 different games. Given that there are only 1051 (give or take) official Famicom carts out there, and also given the insane quantity of rarities he already has listed, this may mean that this seller is breaking up an entire, complete set of Famicom carts - all CIB! I should note that the seller doesn`t actually claim to be selling a complete set, but it looks like he might have one (or something very close to it).

A couple of years ago somebody did something similar on Ebay, where they received 1 million Euros for the whole collection (albeit that collection included some other consoles as well so it was quite a bit bigger and must go down as the most impressive Famicom sale ever). Other than that though, I`ve never seen a collection as impressive of this being sold off all at once. Definitely something worth watching if you are curious about what CIB Famicom rarities will go for, Battle Formula is currently the leader in the bidding at a little over 50,000 yen.

(note - the photo at the top of this post isn`t from the auction, but from my own meagre CIB collection! To see what he has, click on the link above, its way more impressive).

Some carts I have more copies of than others. Super Mario Bros, Spartan X, Excitebike and Donkey Kong Jr for some reason I have quite a few of. They were pretty popular games back in the day and are pretty good games to play now. Still though, I don`t relaly need 12 copies of each even though I have that many.

When you have 12 of the same Famicom cart you can organize them into 3 by 4 squares which, when put together with other carts you have 12 of, can open up some interesting interior decorating ideas.


Parquet type flooring is one. You would have to put them under some sort of sturdy, extremely thick plexiglass to prevent them from being broken though, which would be expensive to install. Maybe not the best idea.
They would make for a great coffee-table top too, just put a piece of glass over them and you are golden. Definitely a cool conversation starter.
They would also work pretty good as wallpaper if you had some way of attaching them to the wall wtihout damaging them. Probably there is some way of doing this. A wall covered with Famicom carts in 3 by 4 squares would look pretty awesome. If I ever open up a Famicom cafe, that is how I am going to decorate it.

One thing that I like about finding old Famicoms is when they have stickers on them. Not just random stickers, mind you, but stickers which were specifically designed to be placed on a Famicom.
This one I picked up a while ago and is sort of my back-up Famicom now. I mainly got it for the stickers on the controllers. Famitsu Magazine used to sometimes include various Famicom stickers that they`d include as special promotions. By far the most useful ones were designed to put on the top sides of Famicom carts so that you could easily identify which cart it was. Actually a lot of Famicom carts floating around out there still have those on them.

Much harder to find though are the ones designed to put on Famicom controllers. I`ve only ever seen two Famicoms with those on them, this one and another that I found at Omocha Souko a few years back which had the remnants of Dragon Quest stickers on them.

I guess one of the reasons they are hard to find is that they don`t really have any function other than to make your Famicom controllers look different, and maybe people were therefore reluctant to put them on. Also they look like they would have been kind of difficult to apply to the controllers, there are a lot of things (buttons, etc) you have to line up perfectly and if you mess it up by even 1mm it just wouldn`t look right.

I particularly like these ones in part because whoever applied them did a really good job of it, they are perfectly lined up and centred. And the artwork on them is pretty cool. Another thing I like is what these stickers tell me about this Famicom. The sticker on the number 1 controller is pretty messed up, indicating that it was used a lot. The sticker on the number 2 controller however is immaculate and looks like it was put on yesterday. Obviously whoever owned this Famicom was accustomed to playing it solo.

Anyway, I just kind of thought these stickers were cool and wanted to do a post about them :)

I have long wished to make a pilgrimmage to Super Potato, the godfather of all Famicom shops. They don`t have one in Fukuoka so I was never able to visit one while I collected games down there, meaning I was also massively excited to get to visit the one in Osaka`s Den Den Town! Look at all those amazing rows of Famicom carts!! With the cool little hand written price tags! So pretty.

The shop is located on a side street that runs parrallel to the main street in Den Den town. There are a lot of Otaku related shops on the street so its kind of a cool place for a stroll.

Prices are on the steep side: you won`t find any bargains there. But oh what a place to browse! I have never seen so much beautiful Famicom stuff collected in one space (save my closet)!

Look at all the Famicoms:

And Twin Famicoms and Disk Systems!!!
And copies of that shogi game for the Nintendo 64 (well OK, not everything they had a lot of was cool):


The hyper rare stuff was, as you might expect, the best. They had a Famicom Box, which I had never seen in person before. This was a coin operated type of Famicom that they used in hotels back in the 80s. They are pretty hard to find. They are also interesting because they use the NES-type controllers and gun rather than the Famicom ones. The game carts, which you can`t really see from the outside, are also shaped like NES ones:


They also had some rare Famicom carts, including these gold copies of Binary Land and Rockman 4. The Binary Land was (according to the written explanation on that card) made especially for the wedding of one of the game`s developers where it was handed out as a gift to guests, meaning there were only a couple hundred ever made (hence the 84,800 yen price tag). The gold Rockman 4 is even rarer, only 8 of them were made. At 628,000 yen (about 6,500ドル US) it is by far the most expensive Famicom thing I have ever laid eyes on.

And of course they had a ton of CIB Famicom carts too. Prices were way too high for my taste but it was cool to see them:

Anyway, this is an awesome shop to visit if you are in Osaka, but like I`ve said don`t expect any bargains (except for that sucky N64 shogi game they have a million copies of up there). Think of it more like a quasi-religious experience for true Famicom believers:)


Related Posts:

Kansai Retro Game Shops 2: Den Den Town in Osaka
Kansai Famicom Shops 1: Kobe

On the last day of our Kansai trip I finally was able to make the pilgrimage to Den Den Town, Osaka`s neighborhood dedicated to electronics (`Den` means electricity). As such it is also the centre of Osaka`s retro gaming stores, thus making it worth a visit.

Den Den Town is in the centre of Osaka, about a fifteen minute or so walk from Shinsaibashi (where we stayed). It is a surprisingly large neighborhood with one main street (pictured above) stretching for several blocks and a number of side and parrallel streets. It is a pretty bustling area.



Most of the shops don`t sell retro games, which isn`t surprising given that there are hundreds of stores in the area. There are quite a few that do though, we wandered into one on the main street and found a wall full of Famicom carts:

The prices were on the high side, but they did have a TV hooked up to a Famiclone with Transofrmers Mystery of Comvoy so we had some fun with that for a while (frustration is sometimes an enjoyable pasttime).

One cool shop we found specializing in retro games was Retro TV Game Revivial:

It is a small-ish shop but packed to the roof with games. They had a good selection of CIB Famicom games:

And a few retro consoles:

The prices weren`t too bad here. There weren`t any absolute bargains but their prices were fair (unlike some of the other shops in the area which were way overpriced).

One cool thing I spotted were some old school Famicom lunch boxes, in Super Mario and Bouken Shima pattern:

They weren`t for sale but I thought they were pretty cool.

I haven`t mentioned the biggest shop I visited in Den Den Town yet because it will be the subject of my next post..... Super Potato!!

Yesterday I ventured out to a new retro-game store for the first time. I had never been before because it is located all the way out in Dazaifu, which is about a 2 hour bike ride away, much too long a ride for it to have fallen into my regular rounds.

I`m going to do a full review of the store sometime this week because it is quite a good one, but in this post I thought I`d just bring attention to some of the crazy retro stuff I found in their junk section. The above picture is of a box of stuff you could have for 500 yen (about 6$). For that you get a Famicom (missing controllers), four Super Famicom consoles, a Gameboy, a mat game of some sort and a few other odds and ends in there. That is a pretty crazy deal, even if none of the stuff works, but there was no way in hell I was going to pedal for 2 hours with that much crap so I gave it a miss.

Another interesting thing they had was this:


If I am counting correctly that is 30 Sega Saturn games for 380 yen (about 4ドル.50), or about 15 cents each. I don`t know anything about the Saturn so I don`t know if there were any good games in there but for that price? Wow.

I didn`t buy that either though. I have a rule against buying games on disc-based systems so the Saturn is not in my collection.

Anyway, I just thought these things were kind of neat. I love finding bargains even if I don`t actually buy them!

I did however walk out of there with a huge pile of stuff that I did fell was worth pedaling two hours for. That`ll have to wait for the next post.

I was browsing the excellent Japanese Famicom news blog Famicom no neta yesterday and I came across a link to the blog of Rakuten Eagles player Ryo Hijirisawa. It contained an entry with the above photo of Eagle`s outfielder Masato Nakamura playing a handheld gaming device.

Look closely though and you`ll notice what is sticking out of that gaming device - a Famicom cart! I`ve examined the photo with a team of experts (me and my dog) and we were not able to identify the game just by looking at the cart. Anybody out there have any idea what game he was playing when this candid photo was taken? Maybe Dragon Quest? But...not quite.

Do have a look at Famicom no neta if you get a chance and can read Japanese (or know how to use Google translate), there are some interesting Famicom news pieces there.

Thought I'd give a little update on the progress of my collection. I am now at 636 carts, close to 2/3 of the way there.
My current rough estimate is that I have about 500 duplicates in addition to that, so I've got roughly 1100 Famicom carts taking up space in my apartment.
1100 Famicom carts take up a lot of shelf space, as I often complain about. Actually, its not normally as much as these pictures make it seem, I usually store them 3-deep so they only take up one row of shelves. Still though....a whole row of shelf.
I just set them up like this to take some pictures of the whole collection, but if I had the space to spare I'd leave them like this all the time. I like this look. Its like having a wall of colorful buttons or something. I think if Andy Warhol had been active during the Famicom's lifetime, he would have used Famicom carts as a medium.
OK, if you want to really impress me, I have a challenge for you. There are about 1100 Famicom carts on these shelves. There is also ONE Mega Drive cart that accidentally got mixed up with them. If you can spot the Mega Drive cart in this photo, well I won't give you anything tangible but you will have earned my respect:
This shelf unit is also home to my "extra" consoles. These are either broken or awaiting parts:
Someday I'll make them all work. And then.....I'll have nothing to do with them.

I believe I may have set a new world record today by stacking 8 Famicom consoles on top of each other.

Actually I just base this on the fact that a very brief google image search did not turn up any pictures of more than 8 Famicoms stacked on top of each other. Likely someone has at some point stacked more, I only stopped at 8 because I only had 8 Famicom consoles at hand. If you've got more than 8, you can probably stack more than that. Though I should stress that you should be careful, my stack of 8 was getting pretty wobbly.

At any rate, until someone shows me evidence to the contrary, I stand by my claim to have the world record. So there.
You have to admit though, 8 Famicoms stacked on top of each other look pretty cool.
You may ask (and why wouldn't you?) what on earth I am doing with 8 Famicoms. To this I answer that I don't actually own 8 Famicoms. I own 12. But the other 4 are Twin Famicoms and AV Famicoms and they would have made my stack look stupid so I excluded them on artistic grounds.

I guess the next logical question is why the hell do I have 12 Famicoms. Good question. I think I am kind of addicted to acquiring Famicom consoles. Whenever I see a cheap one in some bargain junk bin I just have to buy it. Then I take it home, clean it up and try to fix it with my limited knowledge of electronics (ie I bang them until they start working).
My ultimate intention is to somehow find good homes for them, probably via ebay or something. But I don't have an Ebay account or anything and can't be bothered to get off my ass and figure out how to set one up. Thus a bottleneck has developed in my spare room where Famicom consoles just endlessly pile up. Its a vicious cycle.
Mind you, as far as destructive habits go, I think this is a pretty mild one to have. Much better than being addicted to heroin or something. Though I will say this: Heroin addicts don't need to devote anywhere near as much shelf space to their habit as Famicom console addicts do. So, you know, they've got that going for them.

Apart from the minimal joy I received today from stacking them up, the extra ones don't really have much other purpose in life at this point other than to deny me the use of several square feet of the above-mentioned valuable shelf space. So I tried to make the most of it by arranging them in various poses on the floor of our living room and even going so far as to be-deck them with some pulse-line carts:
I spent 4 years in the army back in the 90s. I think this may have been the inspiration for the drill-square precision with which I insisted on arranging them:
Nothing prettier than a cleanly-dressed line of Famicom carts.
I then put them through a couple of other Family Computer maneuvers:
And then back onto the shelf with them.

Related Posts:
- Famicom Console Wars
- Fight Climate Change: Buy a Famicom
- Why the Famicom Has Aged Well Part 2: No Planned Obsolescence

Been busy the past month so I haven't been posting much, but I thought I'd put some pics of my hardware set ups.

Basically I have two famicoms: the old-school one and an AV famicom. I keep the old-school one in the kitchen hooked up to our spare TV:
The yellow box originally contained some sweets but it turned out to be the perfect size and shape for holding famicom games.

Upstairs is the AV Famicom:
I prefer the look of the old school, but the reception with the AV famicom is a million times better so I use this one more.

I've got it hooked up to our main TV along with a Super Famicom, Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 2:
The Famicom gets played about as much as the other 3 put together.

In other news I added a few games to the collection this week. Its up to 420 total now:
Balloon Fight and Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari are pretty damned good games. The Ramen-man one on(lower left corner) on the other hand doesn't look to promising after firing it up yesterday. I picked these up at Hard-Off in the junk bin.