For those who grew up with imported pce in Europe

[Otaking]

Yea I went there it was mini japanese shopping center at Edgware north of london.  Had to take the northern line I think and the ride took ages. 

Yeah I always find it's hard to get across to people how big a city (Greater) London was/is, it's just stupidly massive. For me to have gone to Yoahan Plaza I would literally have been sat on the tube for hours.

There was also a few independent video game stores around peckham, lewisham area selling imported video games too but I can't remember any of the names.  I do remember Raven games in Beckenham junction area even before they had the store the guy Tony was running a small store in one of the rented office spaces.

I think all the different areas of London had little game stores with imports back then, loads of video rental stores I remember had them as well, I used to rent them a lot.

I never quite clicked with Raven Games, something about the staff, those two blokes that worked there. The women who worked there was alright though.

There was tons of different shops I went to, mainly in central London, but one of my favorites was Machine Shack out in Streatham, did you ever go there? they always had all the latest stuff imported, they even had the latest US imports as well, all the Turbo Grafx/Turbo Duo stuff, I remember buying the US versions of Dungeon Explorer II, Exile I & II, Dragon Slayer, Dynastic Hero, Lords of Thunder etc.. all brand new when they were released.

that used to be my weekend.  I would travel to Victoria train station and get the rail to beckenham junction to visit Raven Games.  Come back to Victoria Station and then get the underground or bus to Tottenham Court Road area to visit the CEX stores and then Japan Centers to pick up the mags.

Yeah same here I did a similar kind of a circuit every weekend. I also went to Forbidden Planet and got  the translated Manga comics from the likes of Dark Horse and Viz. And magazines like Anime UK and Animerica.

[Digi.k]

Machine Shack sounds very familiar....


HMV store next to Tottenham Court Road started selling imported pc engine stuff around 1988 for a short while.

[shubibiman]

that used to be my weekend.  I would travel to Victoria train station and get the rail to beckenham junction to visit Raven Games.  Come back to Victoria Station and then get the underground or bus to Tottenham Court Road area to visit the CEX stores and then Japan Centers to pick up the mags.

Aaah ! CEX ! I have fond memories of this shop ! Back in 1998, I spent 2 months in London for a summer job in order to improve my english. I stumbled on that shop by chance and spent most of my spare time after work there. That's were I bought my first copies of Legend of Xanadu, Granzort and Gulliver Boy.

The guy was really cool, he loved the PC Engine and enjoyed to show me games that I had only heard of but had never seen. I could stay for hours talking with him. I even once stayed until the end of day and he offered me a beer.

The last time I went to London (in 2003), the shop had moved a few meters away and the retro section was downstairs. Does the shop still exist ?

Oh, and by the way : in 2001, there were 3 french PCE forums, that eventually all merged into Necstasy.

[brizio]

Living in Italy the scene was smaller than France and UK but still incredible.
PCE hardware coming from Japan reached us, thanks to a few great import stores (I can recall ComputerLand as being one of the first and Console Generation as being my favorite one later on). Popularity of the system was highly increased thanks to all game reviews appearing on the biggest Italian videogame magazines of the time: I assume the first few import stores pushed some units to these magazines to help them create a market for them.
Prices at the beginning were terribly high but with more stores importing hardware and more people buying them, they became at least reasonable (and by saying them I mean not cheap) if compared to officially imported products from Nintendo and Sega.
The scene and the market really exploded only when the RGB/Scart modification became the standard for all systems sold locally. A few stores were able to provide really nice mods that gave more people the opportunity to use their PCEngines with standard PAL TV sets: previously only people with multi-standard TV sets or monitors were able to buy and enjoy the system.
By the time there were several stores selling hardware and software all over Italy: even if the number of stores was never that high, they were covering most part of Italy and a few stores covered the rest with some very good mail order operations.
A couple of years after the US release of the TG16 Italy got also systems from the USA. Distribution of US hardware and games was a niche market inside the PCE niche market but was helpful to enable more people to access great games with less language barrier concerns.
The grey PAL Turbografx system (the one the NEC decided not to officially market) never reached Italy: not sure why but there was no interest by anyone importing it. Most units were distributed in Spain and Germany and I got mine from there.
Besides all the hours I spent playing games, what I vividly remember were the small meetings of PCE users I joined for a few years: at least in my area was not easy to find other users so a few of us were meeting at least one Sunday per month to play games, chat about the console and plan group orders directly from Hong Kong (a good way to save money).
During those meetings I saw a huge number of PCEngine games, all different type of hardware and a huge amount of goodies. And also some incredible stuff that the luckiest guys were able to get from Japan: the FM-Towns Marty and his great games is a good example.
One of us knew a Japanese girl living nearby (she married an Italian guy and moved over here): from time to time she was joining us during the meetings in order to translate articles from Japanese PCEngine magazines or helping us with RPG games. Thanks to her I was able to complete the last puzzle in Dragon Knight II and complete the game!
To thank her we were usually asking our Hong Kong contact to send us Japanese magazines and books (not videogame related) for her.
The last great year for the local PCEngine scene was 1995 thanks to the arrival of the ArcadeCard and the first games using it. By 1996 the system was not sold nor supported anymore by most of the stores and the market was flooded by a huge amount of discounted items and used stuff. Only a couple of stores continued to import systems and games even if most of their PCEngine support was limited to used stuff and new stuff was ordered only under specific requests.
By the end of 1996 we also stopped having our meetings: most of the guys were moving to Sega Saturn or Sony Playstation consoles and our meetings began to be boring for all of us: we had a common passion for the PCEngine before but not anymore at the time.
Anyway I still remember getting an email from one of them that was alerting me when he saw Dead of the brain in local store in 1999...
I am not in touch with those guys anymore but I will forever consider them friends.
And by the way, I still have my old PCEngine hardware and games and I never stopped buying games (for example all new homebrew releases) and by still playing the games!

[Otaking]

that used to be my weekend.  I would travel to Victoria train station and get the rail to beckenham junction to visit Raven Games.  Come back to Victoria Station and then get the underground or bus to Tottenham Court Road area to visit the CEX stores and then Japan Centers to pick up the mags.

Aaah ! CEX ! I have fond memories of this shop ! Back in 1998, I spent 2 months in London for a summer job in order to improve my english. I stumbled on that shop by chance and spent most of my spare time after work there. That's were I bought my first copies of Legend of Xanadu, Granzort and Gulliver Boy.

The guy was really cool, he loved the PC Engine and enjoyed to show me games that I had only heard of but had never seen. I could stay for hours talking with him. I even once stayed until the end of day and he offered me a beer.

The last time I went to London (in 2003), the shop had moved a few meters away and the retro section was downstairs. Does the shop still exist ?

CEX is now a massive chain with stores in most towns across the UK.

I went there all the time from when they first started around 92, their first store was called the Tottenham Court Road Computer Exchange. They then began to expand and opened up more shops around that area.
For a couple of years around (95-97) they stopped selling PC Engine games and some other systems, but they were buying them in. I asked what that was about and they said they're buying in and building up stock to curate a museum. Then at the end of the 90s they unveiled their museum which was basically a large retro shop (which was on Whitfield st.). Amongst loads of other games they had a wall of 1000s of PC Engine games which they had amassed over the previous years, it was very impressive. In the retro shop you couldn't actually pick anything up though, all the games and systems where on shelves behind walls of glass, you had to ask a member of staff if you wanted to look at or buy anything. At this time I applied for a job there and went for an (informal) interview and spoke to someone there and at first it looked like I had got the job, they asked me loads of random questions about PCE, SFC, MD, Neo etc.. and I got the all answers right, they basically said I had the job. They then took me to meet the guy in charge of the museum/retro shop (I think his name was Ash) and he said actually they didn't want someone else who was only an expert on retro imports but someone who knew about native retro computer games as they wanted to expand into that area, like Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST etc..

I think when you went there in 2003 it was a much smaller selection of games than before and had been moved to one of their different store locations (Rathbone Place).


I was just looking for images and found this about the history of the store:
https://uk.webuy.com/about/history.php

Machine Shack sounds very familiar....

One of the things I liked best about it is they had all the game systems set up so you could try out games before you bought them, I didn't know of any other stores that did this.

HMV store next to Tottenham Court Road started selling imported pc engine stuff around 1988 for a short while.

cool, I never saw this. I recall them being on sale in Virgin Megastore Oxford St.
Pretty sure they sold ones the same as the one in this thread.
http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=20360

pictures http://imgur.com/a/UF5YO

[shubibiman]

CEX is now a massive chain with stores in most towns across the UK.

Wow !

Then at the end of the 90s they unveiled their museum which was basically a large retro shop (which was on Whitfield st.)

.

That's the shop I was talking about ! 

Amongst loads of other games they had a wall of 1000s of PC Engine games which they had amassed over the previous years, it was very impressive. In the retro shop you couldn't actually pick anything up though, all the games and systems where on shelves behind walls of glass, you had to ask a member of staff if you wanted to look at or buy anything.

Yeah, I remember that clearly. It was the first time I saw so many PCE games at the same time. We had lots of shops selling PCE games in Paris, but none of them would equal CEX as for the number and the condition of games.

You could always ask to try a game before purchasing it. When I saw Gulliver Boy, I asked the guy if I could try it as I was curious of how the HuVideos would look like. We then went on talking about intros and he told me one of his favourites was the intro of Legend of Xanadu's. I ended up buying both games !

(I think his name was Ash)

OMG ! He's the guy I was refering to ! He's the one who ran the shop back then and offered me a beer (Carlsberg I remember). I couldn't remember his name until now !

I think when you went there in 2003 it was a much smaller selection of games than before and had been moved to one of their different store locations (Rathbone Place).

That's the shop with the downstairs retro section. Rathbone Place was not far from Whitfield Street.

I was just looking for images and found this about the history of the store:
https://uk.webuy.com/about/history.php

Thanks for the link 

One of the things I liked best about it is they had all the game systems set up so you could try out games before you bought them, I didn't know of any other stores that did this.

That was great.

Ash was a big Strider fan. He told me he even owned the PCB back then. I was stunned as back then, there were only few guies who collected PCBs.

This thread is definitely epic !

[Digi.k]

This was the basement to that shop.  Unfortunately all the retro stuff is no more and instead a den for selling blu rays and DVDs exist.  Plus an old CEX advert.

Scan taken from EDGE RETRO mag




I just remembered there was another shop I think they were a chain based and called the same name in Notting Hill Exchange.  They also ran a small videogame shop selling and trading retro games too.  But I hated the way they stuck the prices on the packaging with that really tough to remove glue that would just rip off the packaging if it was cardboard.

[gojira1954]

I worked in the CEX basement for a bit in 2000, Ash had left by then and started up his own shop near Shepards Bush...
CEX got into legal trouble for imported goods starting with R1 DVDs in 1999 then all import games got stopped a couple of years after - the death knell for the retro dungeon :/
I used to do a similar geek tour around London - forbidden planet on oxford st, virgin megastore, console concepts on carnaby street, record exchanges in notting hill
CEX, the notting hill exchanges and the X electrical second hand chains were all owned by different people but they knew each other from working in a second hand shop together some years before then set up their own chains

[esteban]

UPDATE: Still a great read.

In 1996/1997, I was in London and went to some touristy outdoor (flea?) market. I found bins of old Dr. Who magazines and bootleg Backstreet Boys CDs, but I didn't find any Famicom/Sega/PCE stuff

It might have been Camden, but my memory is hazy.

I did enjoy looking at some old British sci-fi  magazines, though. Musty and damp, but fun to read. I didn't even know what I was looking at. It was a different world.

[gojira1954]

Camden market used to be good back then, especially the indoor section. Few other interesting shops close by too - psychotronic video, dragon discs...
Finding PC Engine stuff in a shop was always difficult... I clearly remember handing over 60 notes for coryoon at the Whitfield St CEX when it was retro stuff only, they had a large & nice selection back then

[Otaking]

I just remembered there was another shop I think they were a chain based and called the same name in Notting Hill Exchange.

Yeah Notting Hill Computer Exchange was the first place I saw PC engine games for sale, at the end of the 80s and was probably my most visited games shop of all of them through the era. I'm not sure what their overall company name was. They had loads of separate stores in that Notting Hill Gate area all selling different second hand stuff. Like a shop for VHS tapes, a shop for books and comics, a shop for clothes etc... actually I'll google image search









They would always move and swap the different stores around to all their different Notting Hill premises. So the Notting Hill Computer Exchange swapped premises loads of times through that period.

But I hated the way they stuck the prices on the packaging with that really tough to remove glue that would just rip off the packaging if it was cardboard.

Although I love video games TBH an even bigger passion of mine was music and buying vinyl records and the Exchange's unremovable price stickers were legendary for damaging record sleeves. I spent many, many years travelling all around london trawling through records, I loved it.

[ccovell]

I also went to the Tottenham CEX shop (since I saw their crazy ads in Super Play magazine from way back) when I went on holiday to England in Dec. 2000.  The "Dungeon" was cool, but too much stuff was locked in a cage, and the prices were a little too high for a lot of retro stuff (PCE, namely.)

I did, however, buy several JP Megadrive and UK Master System games which were selling at decent prices.

[Otaking]

the notting hill exchanges and the X electrical second hand chains were all owned by different people but they knew each other from working in a second hand shop together some years before then set up their own chains

I used to go to the Hammersmith X Electrical sometimes, I distinctly remember picking up 1941 on the Super Grafx from there.

It might have been Camden, but my memory is hazy.

Camden market used to be good back then, especially the indoor section.

Camden is a very special place, I'm not aware of anywhere else like it in the UK. On Saturday nights I used to DJ in a bar there through out my twenties (2001-2007). The whole area was like a constant Festival or something, every weekend thousands and thousands of young people flooded the area, 90% in their late teens and twenties.

[wildfruit]

Scene was good.

 I remember opening that on either my birthday or Christmas and nearly wetting myself.
The PCE scene passed me by totally. I would buy magazines every week but never noticed it.

[Otaking]

I also went to the Tottenham CEX shop (since I saw their crazy ads in Super Play magazine from way back) when I went on holiday to England in Dec. 2000.  The "Dungeon" was cool, but too much stuff was locked in a cage, and the prices were a little too high for a lot of retro stuff (PCE, namely.)

When you say "Dungeon" it reminds me, the place smelt really bad, like unwashed nerd B.O.
I remember my girlfriends would wait outside they would never go in there with me as they said it smelt "gross".