The Atari 2800 Saga

 I made a pretty nice pic up on Yahoo Auctions last week: my very own Atari 2800!!!

That is correct, Atari 2800 and not Atari 2600.

The Atari 2800 was Atari`s abortive attempt to export a version of the 2600 to Japan.  They were a bit late to the game with it though, releasing it in 1983 just as the Famicom was about to hit.  That meant it was a total failure in a commercial sense and they only sold a handful of them.

That, in turn, means that these consoles are extremely hard to find today.  Until this one arrived in the mail in all of my years of combing retro game shops I had never seen one with my own eyes before.  I think they are about as close as you can get to a holy grail of retro Japanese consoles (sadly this fact was reflected in the price I paid for it, but I think it was worth it).

When I got it in the mail a few days ago I was so psyched, but I was in for one big shock when I tried to plug it in.  This is probably old news to most people, but I hadn`t realized that new flat screen TVs don`t take RF input.  During all my years in Fukuoka collecting retro games both of the TVs in our house were old-school analogue ones so it never came up.

When we moved we got rid of those and I bought a brand new flat screen.  I had been using my AV Famicom to play games up until now so I hadn`t noticed that it didn`t take RF until the Atari 2800 just wouldn`t work on it.

So I went back onto Yahoo Auctions, found an awesome 1989 Sony Trinitron 14 inch TV for about ten bucks and picked that up.  Today it arrived:

I had a hell of a time trying to get it to work, but eventually I did.  The console came with four games (Space Invaders, Night Driver, Baseball and Missile Command) so I decided Space Invaders would make a good game to break it in on.

I don`t have any furniture to keep the TV on (it is in our spare bedroom now) so it is just sitting on a box for the time being, which is actually kind of a cool way to set up a mini retro-console station.  I love how hard it is to play, I have to fiddle with the RF switch for ages just to get a reasonably clear picture and then when I play the game I am never sure when the slightest move will cause the screen to go completely blank.

Oh and bonus thumbs up to old-school TVs for having the ability to have game consoles placed on top of them, thus saving space.  That is one cool thing future gamers will miss out on with these damn flat screens.

True old school.  This is how retro games are meant to be played.  Old system on an old TV that barely works.  Should keep me busy for a while!

Famicom Storage: the Next Generation

As I mentioned in a recent post, I moved about 6 months ago.  One of the sacrifices we had to make while packing up was my beloved Famicom shelf system.  Painstakingly constructed from 100 yen shop dishracks it was a bit too bulky to justify taking with us, so it went out with a truckload of other stuff to the myriad of Fukuoka second hand shops that take stuff off people`s hands when they move.  The North American tradition of the garage sale  does not exist in a country where most people don`t have garages.  Sadly a Super Famicom and a big pile of Famicom carts (pretty much all baseball and Mahjongs) went wtih it.

Until this week my Famicom carts at the new place were relegated to storage in a box and were completely undisplayed.  That continued until the other day when, in a scene reminiscent of my visit to the 100 yen shop in Fukuoka a couple years ago when I stumbled across those dish racks, I stumbled across a pile of these:

Postcard racks!

I picked up a whole bunch of them (the great thing about 100 yen shops: you can buy tons of stuff on a whim and it won`t break you).  I then put them on the wall and presto, a new Famicom cart storage system is born:

Compared to my old dish rack system these have one advantage and two drawbacks.  The advantage is that these do a much better job of displaying cover art of each game, which you couldn`t see very well with the dish rack system.  Since Famicom carts generally have awesome cover art that is a big plus.

The first drawback is that these can`t hold as many games as the dish racks.  One of these can hold 4 Famicom carts whereas one dish rack could hold 8. The other drawback is that these aren`t quite as stable as the dish racks.  In two years the dish racks never dropped a Famicom cart.  With these, the carts are a bit more precariously positioned so when the next earthquake comes along (they do happen pretty often here) these are all going to be on the floor.

Still, I really like the way this ties a corner of the room together. If you are in Japan and are interested, these racks aren`t available at the Daiso (the main 100 yen shop chain in Japan) but only at Seria.  Also, they have two kinds of these postcard holders, the metal ones I bought and some wood ones (you can see two of them in the photo on the left, just below the Famicom carts holding some baseball cards).  I recommend using the wood ones rather than the metal, they are a bit wider and will fit Famicom carts a bit better (I`m probably going to switch over to those next time I hit Seria).

I`m Back Again: My CIB Small-box Nintendo Famicom Collection

As the part of the title that precedes the colon states, I`m back.  Well, I never left really, I have just been too busy.  Today I am home sick from work (just a cold, nothing to worry about) and for the first time in 2013 I find myself with a few spare moments to devote to my beloved blog.

Ah how I have missed it.  I thought I would do a post on one of my sub-collections - the small box early Nintendo carts CIB.

This is a very difficult to name series because it doesn`t quite correspond to the pulse line carts - Hogan`s Alley for example doesn`t have a pulse line version of the cart but has one of these boxes while Devil World, which does have a pulse line cart, was only sold in the larger silver boxes so far as I know. So tempted though I am, I can`t just refer to it as a CIB set of the pulse line carts even though that is almost what they are.  That means, you know, just look at the pictures to figure out which CIB games I am talking about here.

These, along with the early Namco boxes of similar size, are my favorite Famicom games in terms of boxes.  They just have the right balance of size, color and evocative-yet-simple artwork on the cover to lure me in.  If I had been a kid in 1983 and been confronted with a sales display full of these I definitely would have bugged my parents for them until they became so massively fed up that they just bought me one to shut me up.

Come to think of it I was a kid in 1983.  Lucky for my parents that they never took me to Japan.

Anyway, I only have 10 of these which means I am still a few short of a set.  That includes some of the nicer ones like Mario Bros and Donkey Kong Jr. Math.  Fortunately none of them are expensive so hopefully I`ll track them down at some point.  Sadly that will probably have to be on Yahoo Auctions or somewhere similar as I don`t get out to the shops anymore like I used to.

Anyway, I think the Donkey Kong one is probably my favorite of the ones I do have.  It is a very cool piece of pop art.  I think once I finish the set my next project will be to try and devise some way of properly displaying them all as my current method (putting them in a box stored under the bed) just isn`t doing them justice at all.

New Year Update: Retro Gaming Withdrawal Symptoms

 As I mentioned, by way of explanation for my four month absence from blogging, I had a big move/ job change back in October.  Sadly, since that time, I have been almost completely out of my beloved retro gaming loop.  I just plain don`t have the time that I used to back in good old Fukuoka.  Moreover I don`t have the good Famicom shops conveniently located right next to my place.  Oh Omocha Souko....how I do miss you!

Our new apartment is really great, but sadly I have had to put most of my retro gaming gear collection - the Intellivision, Super Famicom, PC Engine, Color TV Game 15, Sega Mark III and about half a dozen other vintage consoles - into storage due to lack of space.  The only thing I was able to salvage was my AV Famicom, which now sits in a little piece from IKEA, and about 200 of my favorite Famicom carts.  Yup, that means that even the bulk of my Famicom collection is in storage too!

Sadly this also means that my much beloved Famicom cart shelf fashioned out of dish drying racks that I was so proud of a couple years ago also is no more.  We had to make some hard choices while packing up and this was placed into a box that was carted away by a truck headed to a recycling centre a couple days before we left.  It did, I should say, prove its usefulness for those two years so I stick by my original post in which I recommended putting one of these together.

On the plus side, not all is lost.  Today I received in the mail a copy of Maniac Mansion, the first new cart I have added to my collection since the summer.  So I am slowlygetting back on the horse.  Once again my resolution for the coming year is to get a few carts closer to that goal of collecting them all:)

Happy New Year everyone.  And a belated Merry Christmas.

The Blog is not quite dead yet: Nintendo Hanafuda Cards Arrived in Mail

It has been about four months since my last post, how has everyone been doing?  Well I hope.

Unfortunately this is more like a visit than a resumption of regular content.  Work and family commitments have me so swamped that I no longer have time to play old video games, let alone write about (or, perhaps more importantly, shop for) them!

Still, I did snag one neat thing on Yahoo Auctions the other day (online shopping I can at least spare a few minutes for from time to time) and thought I`d resurrect the blog to make a little post about it. 

What I picked up was a box of old Nintendo Hanafuda cards.

As everyone with an interest in Nintendo knows, before it was a video game maker, or even a toy maker, it was a playing card maker.  I had been wanting to find an old set of Nintendo playing cards for a while and when I found these, complete with the lovely (if worn) little wooden box I couldn`t resist.

I see reprints and modern, Mario-themed Nintendo hanafuda cards all the time on Ebay and Yahoo Auctions, but the actual vintage ones are a bit harder to come by (though by no means impossible).

The little red imprint on the upper right of the box says Nintendo （任天堂） using the older style kanji that were in use before the war:

These seem to be post-war cards though, according to the seller they date from the early 1950s.  Open the box up and voila:

A very colorful bunch of cards.  It is a pity that I have no idea how to play:

Anyway, that is that.  I`ll try to make it less than four months before my next post!

More Famicom Erasers

As I mentioned in the previous post, I picked up a lot of Famicom erasers last week. They are pretty neat little things, basically mini versions of Famicom carts.

I am pretty sure these were released by Amada, the same company that made the Famicom Mini cards in the mid-80s. I`m not sure how many they made but I have Donkey Kong Jr, Exerion, Ninja Kun, Urban Champion, Mario Bros, Dig Dug, Tennis, Formation Z and Galaga.

They are quite a bit smaller than the original carts and not quite the same, as a comparison of Galaga cart and eraser reveals:

One of them, in a Mario Bros box, contained a mini Family Computer, the Eraser Computer rather than a version of the game`s cart:
It doesn`t have the controllers but it still looks kind of neat:)

A Famicom cart that fits on your fingertip

Behold, the smallest copy of Wild Gunman you are likely to ever find. About one-tenth the size of the regular cart:
I just picked up a set of Famicom erasers and this was by far the smallest one in the lot. Back in the 80s collecting erasers was pretty big with kids here in Japan. Actually I remember it was big in Canada too, in the 3rd grade way back in 1984 I had a few cherished erasers shaped like various things that I kept in my desk at school.

Here you could get them out of those Gachopon vending machines. Wild Gunma here is so small that the eraser is basically just a generic rectangle that looks nothing like a Wild Gunman cart:
The larger ones though look pretty cool and the erasers themselves are miniature versions of the cart, like Dig Dug here (next to a regular Famicom cart for scale):
I got about a dozen or so of these in the lot, they are all games released early in the Famicom`s life so I think these probably came out in 1985 or 86 at the latest. A very neat little thing that I will never ever in a million years be using to actually erase anything.