Two of my favourite Tokyo people, CheapyD of CheapAssGamer fame and Scott Popular of Scott Popular fame, provide an inside look at iconic retro game shop Super Potato. More »
Believe it or not, it’s not that copy of The Simpsons: Virtual Bart with the giant 62,790 yen price tag. That particular Sega Genesis (read: Mega Drive) game is a mere $600 and change in U.S. dollars; it’s the copy of Maximum Carnage, at right, another batch of licensed Acclaim schlock that was going for an astounding 98,000 yen at Akihabara’s retro gaming den Super Potato. No, that’s not a misplaced decimal point, Super Potato is asking just shy of $950 USD for the 16-bit game, outpricing new copies of Space Invaders and Waterworld for the Virtual Boy.
Fukubukuro boxes/bags are a Japanese new year’s tradition. The deal is this: retailers take a bag, fill it with random crap from their store, put a price on the bag and sell it for a cheap price. Retail gambling, if you will. You could get something you really want for a great price, or you could have paid for a load of crap. Julie bought one from Japanese game mecca Super Potato. She paid a little under $US 10. Inside? Seventy-six games for the Dreamcast, Saturn, PlayStation, Game Boy, PC-Engine, Virtual Boy and Famicom. Lucky sod. レトロゲー★ジャンクダイビング [via Hobby Blog]
Today marked the day I had been looking forward to since I found out I was going to Tokyo, a trip to the nerd mecca, Akihabara. Accompanied by some friends and the ever stalwart friend of Kotaku, Witzbold, we navigated the massive Tokyo subway system and arrived safely in Akihabara after long journey that seemed to never end.
First stop: Super Potato. You’ve heard about it, you’ve read about it, you may have even seen pictures of it, but nothing can prepare you for actually seeing it in person. The outside is fairly unassuming and seems nearly invisible compared to the surrounding shops with their large neon signs. A dingy hallway with a few handmade signs mark the way to a tiny elevator that barely contained our four person party. When the doors opened again onto the third floor, we all gasped in amazement. Here we stood, on the border of vintage game paradise. Famicoms and other ancient systems lined the walls with shelves upon shelves of games of every size and shape imaginable dotted here and there with toys and other gaming memorabilia.
The next floor was just as crowded with every available space taken up by a immense collection of more toys, game soundtracks and various knick knacks. One last trip up the stairs brought us to a dimly lit and smoky arcade filled with various otaku and their girlfriends (yeah, they had them!) who lined the back wall texting on their phones, waiting for their geeky knights to finish conquering the video game world.
Obviously, hearing me describe it is nothing compared to seeing what it was like in photos. I took a ton of pictures despite the various signs indicating that photos weren’t allowed that I pretended to ignore, all for you, our precious readers. So, click below and enjoy the thirty six photo gallery of the possibly greatest vintage game store in the world.
