July 24, 2000
Sad. The video game vending machine which so many of you have written in about is no longer full of video games. I don't know exactly when it changed since I don't get down that far south very often, but as of yesterday, it was selling Magic cards and other trading cards. Bummer. The store it is in front of now has very few games and has converted over to trading cards. So much for used games around Miamaedaira station.
Translations In other bad news, Jeremy Blaustein will not be translating Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of LIberty. It seems Konami (and Hideo Kojima in particular) is looking for a more "direct" style of translation for MGS2SOL. It seems to be quite common for many people who only understand one language to assume that literal translations are better than adapted translations. If the subtitles we saw on the MGS2 preview DVD are any indication, we are gonna get boned.
Net Auctions Lots of you know that online auctions started up in Japan last year. Ebay and Yahoo have Japanese languate auction sites and there are a few home grown sites as well. Yahoo is the most popular with Japanese people at this point. This has provided a new outlet for Japanese people to sell the games they no longer want. Before online auctions, people were limited to whatever the local game shop would give them or if they lived in Tokyo they could try their luck with different places in Akihabara. Now many people are turning to the auction sites to get rid of their unwanted games. Because of the growth of these auction sites, there have been two signifigant changes in the collecting scene.
The first change is that things like promo items or guide books of older games are now available to collectors. Very few game stores stocked these items, so before auction sites, these items were almost impossible to find. The second change is that now some people seem to prefer to try and auction off their old games directly without trying to sell them back to stores. I can't say for sure, but I think that this is part of the cause of why the stores in Akihabara now have fewer used 8 and 16 bit games for sale.
July 9, 2000
Small update to the Pictures section, added scans of a magazine ad for the original Final Fantasy. You would not believe how hard it is to find game magazines from the late 80's! I've gotten lucky to even find the few that I have. I also got some scans of ads for the Famicom version of Metal Gear but I'm saving those for when I put up my Metal Gear site later this year.
CESA (Computer Entertainment Software Association) is starting to make announcements for the Fall TGS. Maybe I'll get off my lazy behind and go this time, just in case Konami is showing anything new for MGS2.
June 15, 2000
More store closings It seems more of the small "Mom & Pop" type game stores are closing or changing over to other types of business. Three stores seem to have closed up along the first three stops on Keio line in Hatsudai, Hatagai and Sasazuka.
The chain "Wanpaku Kouzo" still carries used games, but their older stock (16 bit or 8 bit) is now very small and usually comes with out a box or manual. The worst part is they still have the boxes for many games out on display with a "sold out" tag over the price.
June 3, 2000
The age old quest to get Policenauts issues in English seems to be making progress. If you have even the slighest interest in this, check out this thread on Konami's web forum.
May 27, 2000
Nintendo makes most of their money on sales outside of Japan. 76.7% of its total sales in fact. Most of that seems to be on US sales rather than Asia or Europe. Interesting analysis of how they were hit by the weak dollar here on Yahoo news.
Sega is bleeding
money for the third year in a row. Sega is basically owned by
CSK which has its fingers in way too many different industries. It
seems that since CSK is also part owner of the software house/publishing
company ASCII which just spun off Famitsu as a seperate company called
Enterbrain, some key execs of CSK/Sega will now be brass for Enterbrain.
Executive musical chairs are not going to solve this.