(Tokyo) In a Tokyo neighborhood famous for its shops dedicated to Japanese pop culture, tourists crowd into a shop selling vintage video games, a commodity that collectors from all over the world are fighting over.
Curious and fans of retrogaming on the lookout for rare treasures struggle to cross paths in the narrow aisles of this store nestled in the floors of a building in the Akihabara district, crumbling under piles of treasures from yesteryear.
“Foreign tourists have been increasing in number for the past ten years. They now represent 70 to 80% of our customers,” Mr. Komura, the manager of the “Super Potato” store, who only gave his surname, told AFP.
“When I came back, I was like a kid in a candy store,” smiles David Madrigal, a 23-year-old American tourist, standing next to a pile of consoles yellowed by time. “It’s my passion. I love old consoles.”
For John Wamba, a 31-year-old Californian, the popularity of old Japanese games is explained by the fact that “certain cultural products like Pokémon and the influence of Nintendo have been windows into Japanese culture, from a Western point of view.”
David Madrigal shows off the PlayStation Vita, a portable console from Sony released in 2011, which he recently bought to replace the one from his childhood, which had finally given up the ghost. “I ended up paying 200 US dollars, when it would have cost me 600 dollars in the United States,” he rejoices, also taking advantage of the current weakness of the yen.
“Nostalgia for childhood memories”
Some consoles never sold outside Japan are now highly sought after by foreign collectors, underlines video game historian Hiroyuki Maeda.
“For example, Nintendo’s Famicom and Super Famicom consoles are particularly popular” because they were released overseas in different forms and names (the NES or Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Super NES).
“If you come to Japan and see a machine you’ve never seen before, you want to buy it. It stimulates the ‘collector’s soul,'” he says.
According to this specialist, author of several dozen books on the history of games and consoles, “the definition of retrogaming varies according to the era for which the people who indulge in it are nostalgic.”
A two-hour drive north of Tokyo, in a landscape of rice paddies and lotus fields, Japanese “super collector” Proudro – his online pseudonym – perfectly understands the charm of Japanese video game relics.
Across from the house where he lives with his family, an old building, a veritable video game museum, is filled with his invaluable collection of several thousand old games and consoles and arcade terminals in working order.
PHOTO RICHARD A. BROOKS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A two-hour drive north of Tokyo, Japanese “super collector” Proudro understands the charm of vintage games.
“The appeal of collecting retro games is really the nostalgia of childhood memories in game stores or playing at friends’ houses,” says the 50-year-old collector.
“To be honest, I don’t really play,” he says. “Being surrounded by games, their sounds, their atmosphere, watching them and dreaming, that’s enough to make me happy.”
“Like Japanese prints”
Proudro has spent lavishly to accumulate these marvels, which sometimes reach crazy prices: a still-in-package version of the game “Super Mario Bros.”, released in 1985, sold in 2021 for two million dollars.
Until the late 1990s, however, old games had virtually no value, Maeda said. “In stores, they were piled up in bins” and sold for between 10 and 1,000 yen.
Proudro says he traveled around Japan about twenty years ago looking for these treasures in toy stores and bookstores.
“There were often, in a corner, covered in dust, stocks of Super Famicoms or (Nintendo electronic games) Game & Watch. The old people who ran these stores would tell me to take them away to clear them out.”
“Since I work in vegetable sales, I would give them a box of onions or potatoes, and everyone was happy.”
“Today, this would no longer be possible. These stores have disappeared and with the internet everyone has started reselling,” causing prices to soar.
Proud of his passion, Proudro founded an association of lovers of retrogaming to share it with other aficionados around the world, rejoicing in the interest of foreigners in this Japanese culture.
“But to be honest, I also think that these Japanese goods should stay in Japan. It’s a bit like Japanese prints in the past, which went abroad where they were more appreciated, before being bought back by Japan.”
The archipelago, he regrets, “is slow to realize the value” of its works.