Krafty had done quite a bit of research before our trip, and I am seeing it reveal itself bit by bit. This part included finding a video game store called Super Potato. We got there and found that it was closed though, which was strange because it was about 11:30 am on a Wednesday.

Luckily there was a currently open retro video game store across the street. It successfully got Noo Noo’s attention with its display which showed various generations of Super Mario Brothers games on screens stacked on top of each other.

It was a little bit grungy but well organized, and it was packed to maximum capacity with the stuff that spanned the entire gaming epoch of my youth. It seemed to have a very heavy Nintendo presence with some Sega stuff, but I didn’t see anything Atari in there. There were a couple of Neo Geo systems here and there. I’m not sure whether it was a point of pride for them to only carry Japanese gaming gear or if Atari never really made it to Japan the way Nintendo made it to the U.S. Anyhow, we saw just about every peripheral I ever knew about plus some that I didn’t know about: the Power Glove, Super Scope, that short-lived Nintendo robot. They didn’t have the Power Pad though – maybe they just had to stash it somewhere for lack of space. Most of the peripherals were hanging or perched overhead. Bookshelves were crammed to capacity with cartridges, some of which had never been released in the U.S. Consoles were stuffed onto racks, and there were some very old LCD style handhelds that ran on watch batteries – Popeye, Donkey Kong, and the like. Some of them were priced at $120 – $140. It’s interesting the pricing they must have gone through in their life cycles: moderately priced to worthless to quite expensive.

Also, I found this packaging to be surprising: it depicted a photograph of a physical model made to represent the game. The game graphics themselves were really nothing special to look at since it was 8-bit. Makes sense, but I thought it was curious that they decided it would make more sense to build a model and photograph it than it would to make an illustration.

Also interesting to note is that the Famicom (the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System) was designed with a slot into which the controller fits. The U.S. version had no such storage. I think it says something about Japanese culture – they seem to like to put things in their places.

Noo Noo and Krafty each left with their backpacks stuffed full of cartridges and a Japanese console on which to play them. I left with a sense of nostalgia.