Archives for December 1998
 

December 28, 1998

What an eventfull Chrismas season!  First I want to say thank you to two people (you know who you are) who got me a mint copy of Snatcher for Sega CD and a Sega CDX with a Konami Justifier.  I will be in Kojima heaven over my vacation.  I played a little bit the other night and was really surprised by two things: 1 how much more I'm getting out of this game after living in Japan for a year now and 2 the light gun does not work on wide screen TVs.  For details on #1, wait for the Kojima feature in 99 and #2 is a major stinker.

Christmas day the Neo Geo Pocket version of Samurai Spirits came out.  Since I'm a fan of the series I picked it up with a system.  Nice way to kill time but it is WAY too easy.  The other day while out hunting with TSR & George I played the game out on hard mode on the train without looking at the screen.  I just had TSR tell me if I was dead or not.  Made it to the finall boss w/o a continue.  Fortunately the end came at a station we were getting off so I didn't have to worry about it.  We ended up out near the Sega buildings.  There is really nothing in that area, nothing at all.  We considered ourselves lucky that we found a McDonalds.

I finaly got a decent digital camera so expect to see LOTS more pics of interesting systems, games & accessories in '99.  There is so much stuff which I have not documented yet because I didn't want to post bad pics of good stuff.

I'll end the last post of '98 by thanking all of you who have bought games from me, written in to say hi or tell me what you think about the site.  From my server logs it seems that most people who come to the site read this page and lots of you also read the archives section as well.

December 23, 1998  Happy Birthday Emperor Akihito!

Sonic Adventure came out today.  This thing is so fast. Enough said.

December 19, 1998

Economics 101 Because of the impeachment hearings underway in congress and other factors, the US economy is in a brief contraction.  The dollar has been sliding against the Japanese Yen all week.  If things continue in this direction I will have to raise prices on all special order items as well as systems such as the AV Famicom, PC-FX and Neo Geo CD/CDZ systems which I do not stock but make constantly available.  I will not raise prices on things which are already in stock even if it means I end up taking a loss on the item.

Tristar is dead, long live Tristar 64  Those of you who have been considering the purchase of a Tristar adapter will want to know that it seems that manufacturing has been discontinued on the original Tristar.  I consider this a shame since my Tristar is one of the most usefull accessories I own.  The venerable Tristar is being replaced by the Tristar 64.  It does the same sort of thing, but on an N64 instead of an SNES/SFC.  Unfortunately it lacks an NES slot (SFC/SNES, Famicom & 64 passthrough) and costs twice as much ($150 as opposed to $75 for the original Tristar).  Initially they are available with English screen menues only and also have the ability to enter cheat codes in most popular formats.

Controllers I've found a bunch of interesting FC & SFC controllers recently.  As soon as I get my digital camera set up again I'll document them in the pictures page.

Vacation  I will be out of Tokyo from Dec 29th until January 5th.  No orders will be processed during that time period, but incoming mail will be recieved normally.  I will try to check email, but replies may be slower than usuall.

December 11, 1998

Busy busy busy!  Your kindness is killing me!  I've been up late getting your games ready to ship every night this week!

News:  Sony Computer Entertainment  announced on Dec 9th that they will be a full month late shipping their PocketStation PDA.  According to the announcement in the Yomiuri Shinbun, their initial Dec 23 release date was too ambitious for their production capacity.  You read it here first.  (translation courtesy of Yoko Negita)

Commentary:  Since the PocketStation was really the only thing SCE had at the Fall TGS and they have been advertising it quite heavily, this will be a dissapointment  for SCE developers who planned on PocketStation compatable games for year end sales.  Even giants stumble.

Eyes down:  The first rule of game hunting is look everywhere, high, low and in front of you.  The other night when performing my husbandly duty of taking out the trash, I found a working Superfamicom system in the bag next to mine.  My best finds at flea markets and junk shops have been like this too; the good stuff is never in plain sight.

SFCPI:  The index remains mostly unchanged, but Neo systems are up slightly.  Dreamcast systems are quite hard to come by and I do not expect to restock once my current stock is gone.  Since the US$ has weakened in recent weeks I have had to pass up several items I would have picked up in months passed.  For those of you who have ever considered running an international business, just remember that currency fluctuations can be really unpleasant.

December 7, 1998

Major update to the Pictures page today including new Famcicom cart shapes, Konami's Fun with Kanji, the insides of a Dreamcast, a great Famitsu cover, the Tezuka Osamu Gameboy, a PSX Fishing Rod, The Famicom Network System, the Superfamicom Sataliteview, and the "rarest" Famicom cart!

Things have been really busy around here lately.  Shipping Xmas orders and planning what sort of stuff will appear on the site in 1Q99.    Just to give you some idea of what I have in store:
 

If you have something you would like to see on Superfami.com, write in and let us know!

Dreamcast customers:  I'm sold out right now but I expect more stock soon.

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