hey guys! Sparky - i've moved from China to Singapore, but here is the "heatmap" of PCE goodies around Asia -
China - forget about it. back in the 80s, this place was suppressed and comminized to the core. people were extremely poor, as such there were zero demand for expensive import games. hence you will not find anything in this country retro. copies PS2 games onwards a plenty, but that's it.
Taiwan - country I grew up in - big time retro markets. Taiwan was somewhat a mini-China back in the 80s, what I mean is how it was booming and flush with cash. there were tons of demand for imported items from Japan... starting with the Famicon. It continued throughout. PCE was hugely popular, and there are a lot of hidden stash these days still... you just have to find them. A lot of game shop owners have been in business a long time there and have put their old PCE stock in warehouses.. if you get lucky you can convince some of them to bring the stock out. I did onetime back in a hunting trip in 99, and ended up with 2 SGX boxed, tons of games, etc. My other trip last year was less fruitful. You will get the best deals away from Taipei, in the southern parts, as those gameshop owners will just gladly sell you their old stock without idea about these games value (as do Taipei gameshop owners will).
Hong Kong - same as Taipei. I'll let RR fill you on that
Japan - nuff said! Tokyo does have shops, but again away from Tokyo tend to be where the bargains can be found, especially middle of no-where Hardoffs!
Singapore - I haven't done enough exploring here yet... i'm hoping it will be similar to Taiwan, but the gov't here was anal and extremely strict back then, so perhaps they were more restrictive on import games... especially all these adult majohng games on the PCE
Thailand - I've seen a large manga culture there in old shops, but haven't seen any game shops with old retro stock.
Korea - unknown - only been there 2 times.
Topic: off to Shanghai... (Read 404 times)
