The Awkward Relationship Between the Famicom and NES Collecting Worlds

I was doing a Famicom related Google image search the other day when I spotted the above picture at the top of the results.  I recognized it from this post I did 6 years ago about some of the better Famicom games I had at the time.  But the image wasn't directly from my blog, rather it was contained in this video on YouTube:

The video is by "Pat the NES Punk" who I guess borrowed my picture for some reason.*  The video itself addresses the question of whether demand for Famicom and Super Famicom games is increasing.  They emphatically answer "no" to this question.  Originally I was planning to do a point-by-point response to their arguments, which I should note were made in 2015 and the explosion in Famicom prices since then seems to have proven them wrong.

But then I realized that this was unnecessary since there is really just one common and, for reasons I'll get into further below, faulty underlying assumption behind their arguments which is worth addressing.  That is that Famicom games might be, in economic terms, little more than a substitute good for NES games.  A substitute good is one which is so similar to another good that consumers view them as interchangeable.  Thus if the price of one of those goods rises, consumers will start buying the substitute good instead.  This will cause the price of the other good to rise as well.

So their assumption is that assessing demand for Famicom games can be approached by determining whether or not NES collectors, frustrated with rising prices of NES games, are turning to them as a substitute good.  They conclude that this isn't happening in part based on factually incorrect statements (like not being able to play half the games due to the language barrier, which overstates that quite a bit) or logically dubious propositions (like American collectors preferring the familiarity of NES games, which may be true but doesn't preclude them from also liking Famicom games).

But what I really want to address is the whole NES-centric view that Famicom collecting is little more than an appendage to NES collecting.  I don't think this is accurate.

Of course I have my own personal biases as a Famicom collector who has little interest in the NES.  Seeing discussions like that inspires an almost tribal instinct in me to paint my face blue, don a kilt and yell "Freedom" as I swing a pixelated battleax at the NES hordes that have dominated and oppressed my people for so long.

More objectively though I think its just plain incorrect.  So I thought I would review some of the reasons why analyzing the Famicom market through the lense of the NES market like this makes no sense (at least to the extent that you are trying to understand the Famicom market).  These observations are based in part on my time as a collector but also as a seller of Famicom games on Famicom World, Nintendo Age and RF Generation for several years (mostly from 2011-2016)

1. The Famicom, not the NES, is the most international console

This is kind of a bold statement but I think it is true.  Of course back in the 1980s the NES was the better known of the two internationally (outside of Asia and a few other markets anyway) and the version released in Europe and other regions copied the look of the NES rather than the Famicom (both the console and the carts). But this, I think, makes the Famicom more appealing to collectors internationally today than the NES is.

If you are a European collector looking for something new, the North American NES is pretty blah since it looks exactly the same as your NES, although it might have some releases which didn't come out in Europe you might want to pick up.  And vice versa.

The Famicom though?  The console and carts look completely different and are aesthetically way more pleasing than the boring grey NES ones.  The variety of games is also significantly different and there are loads of great ones that weren't offered on the NES in either Europe or North America. It also has a much more important place in gaming history as the mother of all Nintendo consoles, a title which the NES cannot lay claim to.

I think these factors combine to make the Famicom the go-to "foreign" console for collectors in most countries rather than the NES. This of course means that the potential market for Famicom games is quite a bit larger too (emphasis on "potential" since the domestic market for NES games is still way bigger).

2. The Famicom's Holy Grails are Completely Different from the NES's Holy Grails

One of the most distinctive features of the Famicom and NES collectors markets is that despite being the same hardware, there is almost no overlap between the two in terms of what collectors consider the holy grails.  They each have quite different ones.

There is a list of the most valuable NES games on Racketboy (from 2017) here.  While a lot of those games were also released on the Famicom, the vast majority of them (with some exceptions like Little Sansom, Snow Bros and the Jetsons) aren't among the most expensive and none of them really crack into pure "holy grail" territory.

Interestingly I just realized that there isn't a similar comprehensive list of the Famicom's holy grails out there(the racketboy list above has an addendum which mentions five Famicom rarities but this is just the tip of the iceberg) but I can say that most of the games that would be on it (hey, this gives me an idea for a future post) are not NES icons.  This is because so many of the rarest Famicom games have unique little histories which resulted in very limited releases.  Just off the top of my head some of those are:

Recca Summer Carnival 92
Gold Binary Land
Green Kinnikuman
Gold Punch Out
Yasuda Fire and Safety Rally
 Gold Dragon Ball Z
Gradius Archimedes
Bridgestone Cycle Tailor Made
Exed Exes Silver/ Gold Members Label
Lot Lot Silver/ Gold Members Label

This is by no means an exclusive list, I'm pretty sure the Famicom has way more holy grails than the NES does.

The important thing though is that this difference really demonstrates how Famicom collecting is NOT driven by NES collectors seeking cheaper versions of NES games since the most expensive Famicom games have no NES equivalent.  This also applies to the most expensive regular issue games like Gimmick! and Adventure Island 4 which weren't released on the North American NES.

3. The Japanese market still exists

Its perhaps also worth noting that there are 127 million consumers in Japan who don't really give a shit what foreigners collect, except for the fact that they are making everything way more expensive, which is annoying.  The dynamics of Famicom collecting in Japan among Japanese collectors is significantly different than it is outside.  Japanese collectors have much different tastes in games, and the fact that a game wasn't released outside of Japan, a major driver of a Famicom game's value on the international market, is of zero interest to them.  While the run up in prices on Famicom games I think can mainly be explained by foreign demand, Japanese collectors have (some happily, some reluctantly) jumped on the bandwagon, and stuff like TV shows highlighting the collector value of games are now common place.

If anything though, this chronology puts the horse before the cart (HA!  Get the pun?).  I think shops in Akihabara and Den Den Town were selling Famicom games as collectors items long before NES collecting became mainstream in the US.  Mandarake and Super Potato have been around a while now.

4. Famicom Collectors Come in all shapes and sizes

Returning to the international collectors market here,  it seems to me that people have a pretty wide range of reasons for buying Famicom games and very few do so to avoid high NES prices (even fewer now that Famicom prices are getting so high).

So what are the types of Famicom collector, and what determines their demand?  And how does this relate to the NES market?  We can create a hypothetical band of collector types, from "extreme Famicom collector" on one end to "Extreme NES collector" on the other.

1. Extreme Famicom collector - only collects Famicom games
2. Regular Famicom collector - collects mainly Famicom games, but also other stuff from other consoles.  Has interest in NES, but mainly just in stuff that isn't available for the Famicom.
3. Neutral collector - has lots of consoles including Famicom and NES but does not have a preference for either and collects both equally.
4. Regular NES collector - collects mainly NES games, but also stuff from other consoles.  Has interest in Famicom, but mainly in stuff that isn't available for the NES.
5. Extreme NES collector - only collects NES games.

I think most  Famicom and NES collectors fall somewhere on this spectrum, but the problem with
analyzing the market for Famicom games through the lense of the NES market is that you arbitrarily eliminate consideration of collector types 1, 2 and 3 from the equation.  The relative numbers of each of these groups is an open question which  I don't know the answer to, but at the very least there do appear to be a non-trivial number of people in those categories out there who are spending money on games, so they shouldn't be ignored.

Conclusion

So these are just a few of my thoughts on the folly of judging the market for Famicom games primarily based on an analysis of the idiosyncrasies of NES collectors, which is what Pat the NES Punk does in that video.  I'm not trying to criticize those guys particularly, I watched a few of their videos and found them entertaining, more I'm just trying to add a more Famicom-centred perspective since it seems to be lacking in a debate that is fundamentally about Famicom games (an odd omission).

*On that topic, what is the accepted protocol in the video game blogging community with respect to borrowing pics?  Just borrow away?  Or borrow with acknowledgment?  Or only borrow when you’ve obtained permission? 

I have a lot of photos on this blog and I’m generally OK with people using them, though I think common courtesy demands some form of acknowledgment (which, ahem, was not forthcoming).  That, at least, is what I do whenever I use a photo that I’ve gotten from someone else.  I think this is especially the case when a “big” social media entity (they have more than 230,000 followers)  borrows from a “small” one (I have 113).    I'm not sure I'm in the majority here though, what does everyone think?

The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Retro Video Game Market

 If you look over on the archive of this blog you`ll note that its first 3 years (2009 – 2012) were a lot busier than its most recent 3 years.  Take a glance through the posts in that first three year period and you will see a lot about me going to game shops in Fukuoka and finding some amazing bargains.  At the end of 2012 I left Fukuoka and haven`t been able to roam the retro game stores like I used to since, hence the lower number of posts since then (not to mention becoming a father in that time period too).

A couple weeks ago I went back down to Fukuoka on business.  I tried checking out some of the game shops I used to write about on here, including Mandarake and 007, while I was in town to see how things are going.

What I found made me realize an important and, I hate to say, sad fact: most of the posts I put up here during the Golden Age early years of Famicomblog are now hopelessly out of date.  I don`t just mean that the details, like what shop had what games, are out of date.  I mean that the entire reality of retro video game collecting in Japan which they depict is one which no longer exists.

To put this in extremely simple form: 5 years ago retro video games in Japan were easy to find and cheap.  Now they are hard to find and expensive. 

And this kind of sucks. At least if you live in Japan and collect old video games.

I`d like to devote one of my longer essay-type posts here to talking about how the used video game market in Japan has gone from one which just a few years ago was full of amazing bargains to one which today features way fewer of them.  I`m going to do so by looking at the development of three distinct modes of buying retro games in Japan and how they have changed over time – big recycle shops, specialist game stores and online auctions.  First up will be the big recycle shops…

The Peculiar History of the Market for Second Hand Goods: Hard Off and the Big Recycle Shops

Most people who have spent some time collecting old video games in Japan are no doubt familiar with the big second hand goods stores, often called `Recycle shops`.  The best  of these in terms of hunting for retro games are major nationwide chains, like Hard Off/Book Off, or regional chains like Manga Souko in Kyushu.  These can sometimes turn up amazing treasures.

If you haven`t been here for too long though you might not realize that these types of stores are actually a relatively new feature of Japan`s retail landscape.  When I arrived here for the very first time in 1999 they were only just starting to appear and prior to the 1990s none of them had existed at all.

Second hand goods in Japan before that time had been a relatively small niche market dominated by pawnbrokers (which still exist but generally trade in higher value goods rather than old video games and thus aren`t on most video game collector`s radars) and smaller mom-and-pop style second hand stores.  During the bubble economy era of the 1980s there seems to have been a social stigma associated with buying used goods in general – one often hears stories of how people instead of selling perfectly good electronics items that might sell for big money in America, would instead just put them out as trash.

More importantly though, the structure of the used goods market before 1995 was heavily influenced by regulations set out in a law called the Used Goods Dealers Act. (For information on this I am aided by a series of very interesting articles by Prof. Frank Bennett entitled `Second Hand Japan: Used Goods Regulation 1645 – Present`). The Act, which was passed in 1949, mainly regulated the trade in second hand goods from a theft-control perspective, viewing it as a problem (since people could fence stolen goods through second hand stores) more than as a market worth promoting.  One of the key requirements of the Act was that all businesses operating second hand goods stores required a special license to do so.  This wasn`t in itself necessarily problematic, but these licenses could be revoked if a business was found to have sold stolen goods.  Since the license was granted to a business as a whole rather than to a specific store, Prof. Bennett opines that this largely discouraged the development of businesses running chain recycle stores.  Under those regulations, if a chain like Hard Off had existed and one random part time employee of at one of their hundreds of locations had inadvertently bought and sold a stolen TV for example, the entire chain (as opposed to just that one location) could be shut down.  The risk of that happening thus prevented Hard Off and other chain recycle shops from existing under that system – nobody would be willing to take the risk of creating a business model with such an Achilles heel. 

A second area of regulation which affected second hand retailers is that affecting large scale retailers.  Prior to the late 1990s large scale retailers (ie box stores) were subject to a fairly rigorous approval process whenever they wanted to open a new location.  Small scale retailers had a lot of say in that process and could effectively veto plans for any stores that might harm their interests opening up nearby, which meant that there were actually very few large box stores in Japan until the turn of the 21^st century (department stores and supermarket chains like Daiei being an exception). Since most of the big recycling stores today are based on a box-store type business model (they need a lot of floor-space to stock a wide range of goods in order to attract customers), this feature of the regulations also prevented Hard-Off type businesses from existing.

In the late 1990s both of these areas of regulation were significantly changed, with the licensing system for used goods businesses abolished in 1995 and the approval process for box stores significantly de-regulated a couple of years later.  Not coincidentally Hard Off opened its first location at this time and the chain stores that we know today began popping up in all corners of the country.  This was also helped along by the negative economic picture in Japan in the late 1990s, which made people appreciate the value of used goods more than they had previously.

Famicom and other retro video games were among the variety of goods which these chains would stock. Importantly at the time these chain stores were starting to appear in the wake of deregulation, the Famicom was still a relatively recent item (Hard Off opened its first location only 2 years after the last Famicom game was released) and thus retro games weren`t treated as collector`s items but rather were dealt with in the same way that books, CDs and VHS cassettes were – just used things that people might want to use.

The business model of these shops generally involved (and still involves) people driving up with carloads of old crap they wanted to get rid of and just taking whatever the shop clerk offered them for it.  The clerks would then slap a price on stuff and throw it on shelves.  With things like old video games there is very little consistency among shops within the same chain as to what to charge for a specific game. They were just another random commodity and the store could only make money if they sold things in volume, so the clerks could, given how little they paid for the item (one Hard Off I visited gave a flat rate of 10 Yen per Famicom game regardless of the title) put whatever price they wanted on something.  This made these shops a collector`s paradise if you happened to be in the right place at the right time.

When I first arrived in 2008 I got most of my games from chain stores like these – especially Omocha Souko which I have numerous posts on here about.  Two big things have happened in recent years which have really changed the usefulness of these shops to video game collectors though.  The first is that both the shops and the people driving carloads of junk to them have obviously become much more aware of the fact that video games are a collector`s item than they were 5 or 6 years ago.  I don`t have as much time as I used to for video game shopping, but I still drop by Hard Offs and similar stores every once in a while and it has been a long time – years – since I found a great bargain at one.  The standard experience I get when I walk into one today is a retro game section consisting of a rack full of Super Famicom tennis and soccer games for 500 Yen each, along with a pile of broken PS1 controllers (this is what I found at 007 in Fukuoka the other day).  The days when clueless people would dig out a box with 50-100 games in it that was covered in dust and included copies of rarities like Gimmick in it, truck it over to a Hard Off, sell it to an equally clueless clerk who would then dump everything into a 200 Yen each bargain bin seem to be over.  TV shows highlighting the collector value ofvideo games have probably played some role in this.

The second problem is that the big chain stores themselves are starting to disappear.  My beloved Omocha-Souko of course closed down in 2012, but it is hardly alone.  I don`t have any data on this, but I do know of several other chain recycle stores and Book Off/ Hard Off locations which have closed in the past 4 years (and none which have opened in the same time).  Book Off seems to have been particularly hard hit, the suburban Japanese landscape is becoming increasingly cluttered with box store locations that you can easily tell are former Book Off locations based on the distinctive yellow and blue color pattern left on the buildings.  Increased competition from online auctions is the most likely culprit, and I will get to them a bit below. 

Basically what I want to say though is that the big chain recycling stores are kind of an interesting, but probably disappearing, element of the retro game collecting experience in Japan. De-regulation in the 1990s allowed them to burst onto the scene and for about a decade they provided an amazing source of cheap games to pick over.  That window seems to be closing now, which is kind of a shame.  Glad I was here to experience it while it was still open though.

The Video Game Specialists – Mandarake and Super Potato

In the previous section I mainly talked about large recycling shops, but its important to bear in mind that those shops generally don`t specialize in games or have any knowledge about them.  Some shops, however, do specialize in games and cater to gamers (and collectors of games) in particular.  

It is hard to find information about some of these.  Obviously game shops have existed since the first video games went on sale, but what about game shops that specifically stocked used games?  Anecdotal evidence from my travels suggests that a lot of mom and pop style shops did start to spring up during the Famicom`s original lifetime.  Coinciding as it did with the above mentioned regulatory framework favoring small retailers these seem to have been small, family owned businesses.  Many of the smaller ones I visited in Fukuoka while I was there seem to have closed and I don`t have a lot of info on them.  But two of the more successful ones which eventually became chains – Mandarake and Super Potato – we can talk a bit about.

Aside from both being chain stores that often operate in close proximity to each other, Mandarake and Super Potato are quite a bit different creatures.  Super Potato is actually the only one that really counts as a `pure` retro game store since that is all it sells, while Mandarake sells a wide variety of other goods (mainly comic books, toys and cosplay stuff).  An important common feature they have though is that unlike the big recycle shops they both have specialist staff who know the value of games and have long priced things accordingly.

It would be really useful to know a bit more about Super Potato`s origins as a store, but the internet doesn`t really tell us much (at least as far as I can find – anyone out there know a bit more?)  Its website says nothing about the store`s history, nor does the Japanese Wikipedia page or any other sources I could find.  Mandarake, on the other hand, is a publicly traded company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and subject to certain disclosure requirements and thus it is much easier to find out historical information about it.

The first Mandarake store was opened in Nakano (Tokyo) in 1980, under the simple name `Manga Used Book Store`.  Judging by the name it likely specialized only in comic books at first.  Business seems to have gone well and it was incorporated in 1987 under the name Mandarake with a capital of 2 million yen (about $18,000 US at today`s exchange rates, not a huge sum).  It opened its second store in Shibuya in 1994 and in the following years would further expand to Nagoya, Osaka, Fukuoka and Sapporo, as well as opening further locations within Tokyo. 

Its sales have grown year on year – from 1.4 billion yen in 1995 to 8.6 billion yen in 2012 (the last year for which data is posted on its website).  This would seem to indicate that it is doing well, but it is a bit difficult to determine how much of this amount is attributable to retro video games (which generally only take up 10-20% of floor space at the Mandarakes I have been to) and how much is from other merchandise.

While we don`t have much information on Super Potato`s origins, we can piece together a bit of its recent story based on information about store closures.  According to its Japanese Wikipedia page, 10 different Super Potato locations have closed across Japan since 2009, with 8 of those coming in the period 2013-2014.  In the same time period, only one new store (in Nagoya, as first reported here on this very blog!) opened.  For a chain that currently has only 10 stores in operation, closures of that scale are huge. 

This isn`t a perfect comparison, but I think it can generally be said that Mandarake is a growing business while Super Potato is a shrinking one and the main difference between them is that Super Potato is a pure retro game shop while Mandarake has a much more diversified product range.  It is hard to speculate about what problems Super Potato is facing (I note that its prices have always been on the high side for Japan), but I suspect some of it might be owing to the above mentioned changes in the retro video game market as a whole – it is simply getting harder to find cheap stock on the one hand, while increased competition from online auctions is probably biting into their customer base more than it is for the more diversified Mandarake.  Either way, Super Potato is kind of the market leader for retro game shops in Japan and if it is doing bad, this bodes poorly for other specialist shops too.  This brings us to….

The Online Market – Yahoo Auctions

Finally we come to the big elephant in the room – online auctions.  Even online, it seems, Japan has to be different from the rest of the world.  Ebay tried entering the Japanese market in the early 00s but quickly withdrew after failing to make much of an impact (probably due to the prevalence of postal accounts, which allow for free transfers between buyers and sellers.  Paypal fees? No thanks.)  Yahoo Auctions is the big one.  And at any given moment it has a huge amount of retro video game stuff up for bid.

I have been an active user of Yahoo Auctions (only as a buyer) for almost 5 years now and I can say from firsthand experience that the market has changed radically in that time.  In keeping with the above description of the big recycling shops, when I first joined Yahoo Auctions it was obvious that a lot of the games were being sold in lots by people who didn`t have much idea as to the rarity/value of the games they were selling.  This suggested that people who would previously have been dumping those games at recycling shops were now dumping them on Yahoo Auctions in order to cut out the middle man. 

Most interesting though – and fun for me at the time – was that the auction prices never seemed to go too high.  Often you could get stuff for a tiny fraction of what it would sell for on Ebay.  So in addition to relatively uninformed sellers you also had a fairly laid back set of uninformed buyers bidding on the stuff and building up nice collections on the cheap. 

This dynamic no longer exists.  Sellers now are obviously way more knowledgeable than they were in 2011 or 2012 – you almost never see a rare game stuck in a huge lot anymore, and on rare occasions when you do the seller has usually put that game`s title prominently in the description.  Prices too have gone through the roof – I wouldn`t say there are no longer any deals to be found, but when you find them they tend to be much more modest (no steals, but maybe some decent priced stuff) and they happen way less often. 

Japanese bloggers generally chalk these huge price increases on Yahoo Auctions to overseas buyers and I think that is probably the case.  One big piece of evidence supporting this theory is the correlation between exchange rates and game prices on Yahoo Auctions.  The first big bump in prices I noticed happened shortly after the Yen lost a large chunk of its value against the Dollar about 3 years ago (which wouldn`t have happened if only domestic buyers were to blame).  Another is that proxy services which allow overseas bidders to bid on stuff seem to have proliferated over the past few years, making the Yahoo Auction market much more open to the rest of the world than it was a few years ago (and thus much more easily influenced by foreign prices). For famous and hard to find games (Contra, Crisis Force, etc), the prices on Yahoo Auctions in 2011 for single copies used to be easily half what you would have paid on Ebay, but now they are pretty close to even.  It is really hard to explain this increase based on any changes particular to Japanese collectors, so I think the influence of overseas buyers is by far the biggest factor driving this.  This of course has side effects on physical stores in Japan, who in addition to having more difficulty getting stock in the first place are also more incentivized to sell their games on Yahoo Auctions where they can reach overseas buyers willing to pay much more for games than Japanese buyers are, thus making the brick and mortar stores even less appealing to bargain hunters. 

Conclusion

It is kind of sad to say but I think the market for retro games in Japan has basically gone global, meaning the selection of games and the prices charged for them to collectors living in Japan (or visiting) is a lot less attractive than it used to be.  A lot of the stuff I said in posts like this one here simply doesn`t seem to be the case anymore.  The big recycling shops that used to dump treasures into junk bins are disappearing and the ones which still exist don`t get many treasures to dump anymore.  The specialist stores seem to be having trouble making their business model work in the era of online auctions.  And the online auctions have seen prices explode over the past few years, which has effects on the other two.  Its an irreversible cycle that will probably continue down that path for a while before it hits some sort of equilibrium when prices stabilize on the international market. 

This isn`t to say that you can`t find bargains, they still probably exist out there.  Somewhere.  But the wild west days of finding copies of Gimmick for 100 Yen seem to have past us by.

Retro Game Collectors: Why Don`t We Collect Rookie Games?

Something kind of odd I have been noticing about retro video game collectors is the fact that, unlike other types of collectors, we don`t seem to place much importance on the `rookie games` of major characters.

By `rookie game` I basically mean the game in which a major character made his/her/it`s first appearance.

In baseball cards, for example, a player`s rookie card, like this 1951 Bowman Willie Mays, is considered really valuable and everybody wants it.  Willie Mays is of course a popular player so all his cards ae popular, but his rookie card in particular is the one that everyone places the highest value on

In comic book collecting too the first issue that a major character appears in is always sought after and way more valuable than other issues.  Like issue 27 of Detective Comics here featuring Batman`s first appearance

 

In video game collecting though we don`t really seem to attach a great deal of importance to the question of whether or not a game features the first appearance of a major character or not.  Value seems to be determined solely by how rare a game is and how popular/fun to play it is.  We don`t even  have a word in our collecting vocabulary to describe the concept (`rookie game` is just something I made up and probably doesn`t work too well).

Its a bit odd given that we can easily identify which carts feature the first appearance of a given character.  Like Antarctic Adventure here features the first appearance of that penguin:

 Probably the most impressive `rookie game` would be Donkey Kong, which featured the simultaneous first appearances of both Donkey Kong and Mario, arguably the two most famous video game characters of all time. 

I have pictured the Donkey Kong Famicom cart at the top of this post, but if we are going to be strict, I don`t think that would count as a rookie game.  The Colecovision cart was the first home port of Donkey Kong, so I think the Colecovision Donkey Kong would be considered the true first appearance cart of those two characters (I find it kind of interesting that Nintendo`s two most famous characters didn`t make their home debut on a Nintendo console).  Technically of course the game was featured on Arcade cabinets first, but I don`t think those count (or, more accurately, they do count but would fall into a different category since collecting arcade cabinets is a whole different ballgame from collecting carts).

Anyway, those are just some thoughts I had about that.  I wonder why we don`t collect video games in the same way that comic book or sports card collectors do.  I guess part of it might have to do with the fact that video game carts are tied to specific consoles and most of us collect games for whichever systems we have or like rather than just collecting carts for collecting carts` sake (which is kind of what baseball card collectors do).

It would make for kind of an interesting approach to collecting.  Some systems definitely have a lot of important characters first appearance, like the Famicom (Zelda, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest characters, etc). 

Question: Are video game carts cooler than discs?

This morning I read this article by Andrew Leonard about vinyl records and CDs and it got me drawing some of the obvious parrallels between collecting music and collecting video games.  The point that he makes begins with the observation that there is still a lot of demand out there for vinyl records.  In the American market last year saw the biggest sales numbers for vinyl in over 15 years, with the few factories that still press records ramping up production in response.  In Japan I can say that a similar trend exists, there are tons of record specialty stores in most cities (the Osu neighborhood that I featured last week has at least half a dozen record stores stocked with tons of vinyl). 

Music CDs, on the other hand, seem unlikely to see a similar resurgence of interest.  Vinyl`s resurrection from obsolescence lay in the fact that the physical act of playing a record on a turntable is significantly different from that of listening to a digital audio file.  It is also kind of cool.  CDs on the other hand don`t really offer that distinction.  Vinyl is analogue.  CDs are digital - too similar to the technology that replaced them to really offer someone an incentive to maintain a large collection of them. 

This got me thinking about the video game connection: are carts like records?  Does that make them cooler than disc based games?  Are people therefore more likely to collect carts than they are disc based games?

In some ways music and video games are similar  Carts are analogue (edit: actually they are digital, but they kind of `feel` analogue).  They offer a different physical experience to CDs - the feel of the plastic in your hand, blowing on the connectors, trying to get the thing wedged in correctly.  Its all different in ways that make them kind of cool.

Carts also seem to lend themselves more easily to being collected than discs.  Really what you are mainly after if you are collecting disc based video games is more the box and manual with the artwork rather than the disc itself.  A video game disc on its own is almost worthless (well, its worth whatever the game itself is to play, but not much more).  The CDs just don`t display the cover art of the game very well and you can`t handle them in a carefree way like you can with carts. 

There is also a bigger generational factor at play with video games than there is with music.  An album released on vinyl was probably also later released on CD. The Beatles for example released all their albums years before CDs even existed yet every one of their albums (and more) have been released on CD. Anybody collecting albums though is going to want the vinyl version rather than the CD, thus making the CDs redundant from a collector`s point of view.

With video games though you don`t have as much cross-generational releases on different media.  Most Famicom games were only released on cart based systems and never got released as disc based games (save on various collections, which don`t really count).  So the medium is more readily tied to a specific generation than with music.  Also, most disc based games (unlike music originally released on CD) can`t be retroactively released on a cart based system due to the technological limitations of that medium.  I can get a copy of Nirvana`s Never Mind on vinyl even though it was originally released on CD, but I`ll never be able to get a copy of any PS4 games in cart form.


So while there is a similarity between carts and vinyl, there are still some differences between video games and music which make the carts/vinyl analogy a little problematic.  Still though, I think carts are way cooler than discs.  Anyone agree?  Or violently disagree?

What Kinds of Companies Go on to Make Video Game Consoles?

Yesterday I had a bit of time and a random thought on my mind: what kind of company makes a video game console?

It occurred to me that this might be a somewhat interesting way of approaching video game history.  So I thought I would put together a list of every company that has produced and marketed a video game console to see what it was they did before they made consoles.

It might seem an odd question, but it is also an interesting one.  A company is an amalgamation of people supplying labor, money, management expertise and other skills to a business venture.  In the case of video game consoles, its kind of interesting to ask what those companies which decided to make a console were doing before they made that decision.  Were some types of companies more likely to make a video game console than others?  Do certain types of companies make better consoles that succeed on the market?  How did that change from generation to generation?

So I put together the following tables, which trace the history of video game consoles from the 1st generation to the seventh.   I didn`t include the eighth because it is still new and we don`t yet know what else might get released this generation. Basically if a company released a console for the first time in a given generation it gets listed, along with the industry that the company was originally involved in.  I didn`t list the company a second time if it released a second console (so for example Sony appears in generation five, but not in six, etc).  I excluded dedicated systems from the list, which means there weren`t many from the first gen (which I combine with the second gen in the tables). I also excluded consoles that were cancelled before release. The tables reveal a few interesting things.  Here they are in order:


First and Second Generations

Company	Notable Console	Company`s original industry
Magnovox	Odyssey	Electronics
Fairchild	Fairchild Channel F	Semiconductor manufacturer
Coleco	Coleco Vision	Leather
Atari	Atari 2600	Arcade Games/ Consoles
RCA	RCA Studio II	Electronics
Bally Manufacturing	Bally Astrocade	Pinball Game Manufacturer
Mattel	Intellivision	Toy Manufacturer
Bandai	Bandai Super Vision 8000	Toy Manufacturer
VTech	VTech Creativision	Video Game Manufacturer
Epoch	Epoch Cassette Vision	Toy Manufacturer
Emerson	Arcadia 2001	Phonographic Records
Entex	Entex Adventure Vision	Toy Manufacturer
Smith Engineering	Vectrex	Video Game Manufacturer

Third Generation

RDI	RDI Halcyon	Video Game Manufacturer
Casio	PV-1000	Smoking pipe manufacturer
Commodore	Commodore 64 Games System	Typewriter manufacturer
Amstrad	Amstrad GX4000	Consumer Electronics
Sega	Master System	Jukebox/ Slot machine maker
Nintendo	Too many to mention!	Playing Card manufacturer
Daewoo Electronics	Zemmix	Consumer Electronics
Worlds of Wonder	Action Max	Toy Manufacturer

Fourth Generation

NEC	PC Engine	Telephone manufacturer
Konix	Konix Multisystem	Video game maker
SNK	Neo Geo	Arcade maker
Memorex	Memorex VIS	Computer Tape maker
Philips	CD-i	Lamp maker
Funtech	Super A`Can	Office Equipment Maker

Fifth Generation

Pioneer Corporation	Pioneer Laser Active	Speaker maker
Fujitsu	FM Towns Marty	Information Technology
Sony	Playstation	Consumer Electronics
Panasonic	3DO	Lamp maker

Sixth Generation

Microsoft

X Box

Software Manufacturer

Seventh Generation

Zapit	Game Wave	Video game maker
Zeebo	Zeebo	Consumer Electronics

There are a few interesting things we learn from these tables.

The first is that a lot of toy manufacturers - Mattel, Bandai, Entex, Worlds of Wonder - entered the console market in the first to third generations, but from generation four (Super Famicom/Mega Drive) they completely stopped entering the console market.  I guess this may be a result of the increasingly complicated nature of consoles.  In the early generations the types of skills that companies had for making toys were probably more easy to transfer to the making of simple video game systems, but as the technology progressed it became harder for them to make that leap and they just stopped trying.

The second is that, relatively speaking, not many of these companies began life in the video game world.  Atari is one of the few, having been founded specifically to make video games.  After that there are a smattering of other companies founded by former employees of console makers or companies that were in closely related fields like arcade games - Smith Engineering (Vectrex), Vtech, Konix, SNK and Zapit. 

There are also a few really oddball origins for some of these companies.  Casio, which released the PV-1000 in the third generation, started off as a maker of smoking pipes in postwar Japan before moving into the field of calculators and other electronics it is more famous for.  Coleco, which made one of the most popular consoles of the second generation, got its start in the early 20th century producing leather goods.  Sega started off as a jukebox maker, which I think is pretty cool.  And suprisingly not one but two companies on the list - Philips and Panasonic - got their start as lamp makers in the early 20th century.

Other than that most of the industries are relatively unsurprising - electronics or computer related items make up a lot of the list.  That makes sense given the transferability of skills and expertise between those and the making of a video game console.

Another thing worth noting is the sudden drop off in new entrants after the fifth generation.  The sixth generation is an interesting one - according to this Wikipedia list there were actually a large number of companies planning to enter the console market that generation but most of them were cancelled before release.  The seventh generation had a few entrants with Famiclone type consoles, but I didn`t include them on the list since those aren`t serious competitors in a generation`s console market.

The rapid drop off might be an indication that the console market got a lot tougher to enter after the fifth generation. Unsurprisingly each generation since then has been dominated by the exact same big three - Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.  That marks the longest run in console war history that you had effectively the same list of big competitors dominating - the Sega/Nintendo/Sony console war lasted only two generations (though the Sega/Nintendo console war lasted a generation longer, but with NEC as the main competitor in the 3rd gen).  The sixth generation was also the last generation in which a new entrant (Microsoft) was able to become a major competitor.

Anyway, those are just a few thoughts about what this tells us.  In terms of the current generation the big three all come from widely differing areas.  Nintendo started as a playing card maker, then transitioned into toys before making consoles.  It is the last of the toy makers from the early generations to still be in the business.  Sony for its part was one of a relatively large number of consumer electronics makers in the 3rd -5th generations to try making consoles.  Microsoft is...well, its Microsoft.