A New Adventure: Gaming – Part 2

In my last article I talked about my gaming roots from childhood through college, as well as my first few years in Japan and when I returned to the USA. In 2010 I moved back to Japan once more, with a short stint in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, then a few years in Nagoya, Aichi, and where I am now in Yokohama, Kanagawa. To be honest, much of my free time on the weekends and after work were spent in card shops playing Magic the Gathering from 2011 up until the pandemic in 2020 (when every shop shut down for almost 2 years to players). I was still playing video games during this decade, but it was much more of a casual hobby and an after thought than my main thing. It wasn’t until during the pandemic that I decided to change my focus back to gaming.

Playstation 3

When I moved back from the USA to Japan in 2010, I pretty much only had my PS2 and DS Lite on me. Everything else had been left in the states to be slowly sent over in the proceeding years as I got more space to store and keep everything. Luckily for me, the person who had taken over for me at my previous job in Hamamatsu was moving back to the Scotland at the time and was looking to unload some things. Enter the Playstation 3. I started out with just the system and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune as my first game, but quickly managed to procure more games as my interest in the system grew. Luckily, there were quite a few Japanese games that also had English settings which allowed me to buy them locally instead of overseas which saved me a lot of money. This system was the peak of First Person Shooting for me. I loved the Dead Space series, Bioshock, and Killzones 2 and 3. The Castlevania games were also great, but if I have one gripe about the system it is that the controllers were garbage. I ended up going through 2 controllers whose buttons became sticky and couldn’t finish some of these games because of it. I only recently found another affordable PS3 controller so I can finish them up. Looking forward to finally getting through this backlog!

Playstation 4

From 2011 to 2017, I was pretty happy just playing my PS3 and other retro systems that I had with me. During this time period I was heavily into Magic the Gathering which introduced me to another friend who also played when I moved to Yokohama at the end of 2017. We became good friends until he left during the start of the pandemic, but it was because of him that I was able to get a Playstation 4. He was upgrading to the Pro system and wanted to get rid of his old one, and after hanging out at his place playing games and Magic the Gathering for the last few years, I took him up on the offer. Not only did he have an impressive Magic the Gathering collection, this friend also had a mind-bogglingly good retro video game collection. It’s what planted the current seed of game collecting in me once more, and also convinced me to pick up games in Japanese.

Just like the PS3 before it, the PS4 got even better at including dual audio tracks and settings on their games. I was able to get close to 85% of my games in Japan (hence all the Biohazard named games instead of Resident Evil). Horizon: Zero Dawn was the first game I played on the system and after beating it I was impressed. I played games like Kingdom Hearts 3, Uncharted 4, and the Last of Us Part 2 on it, but I really didn’t start to dig into the library of the system until I started streaming in 2021. The built-in option to stream from my PS4 was a game changer for me, and I ended up playing almost all of these games on stream. I’m still buying games for it as prices go down, most recently getting the Uncharted PS4 collection and Biohazard RE:4 for around $10 each. It’s really hard to pick a favorite for this system, I’ve enjoyed almost all of these games. And while this collection might seem kind of small, it’s only because I chose to buy many of the current generation of games on the Nintendo Switch instead.

Nintendo Switch

I absolutely adore the Nintendo Switch. I didn’t buy mine right away, but Let’s Go Pikachu sold me on the system and was my first purchase, along with Mario Odyssey. As with the PS4, my friend living in Yokohama at the time convinced me to get a Nintendo Switch and I ended up getting one at the end of 2018. I’ve had great success buying the Japanese versions for cheap that have English settings on them. Almost 90% of the games I bought for it are from Japan and are 100% in English. It’s become my favorite system for RPGs, and I have quite a few digital games as well. During the pandemic I got Nintendo Switch online so my wife and I could play Animal Crossing with our friends and family (I bought her a Switch Lite a month before they all sold out during the pandemic), and it’s always been something we play over the last few years. I’m still working on the backlog of games but due to the time spent on trains and commuting here (my average is about 2-3 hours a day), I should be able to finish quite a few in the next year or so. At one time I had commutes of about 4-5 hours a day in far away places, but it wasn’t a problem because I had my Nintendo Switch with me. I wracked up a good 100-150 hours each on games like Fire Emblem 3 Houses, Final Fantasy XII, and Breath of the Wild during those times. As long as I could get a seat on the train, I was good. Also just an FYI, but if you’re interested in seeing me finish my backlog of Switch and PS4 games in the future, you can do so on my Twitch channel!

Gamecube

The Covid-19 pandemic spurred a lot of people to play and buy retro games from 2020 to the present, but I would say that my situation was a little different. I already have a North American version of the Gamecube back at home. I chose not to have it shipped over to Japan because my brother wanted to continue playing it and I was limited on space. I have a decent sized collection of about 10-12 games in English, but when prices started to go up because of speculators and collectors, I couldn’t realistically sit on games that I had gotten new versions of (RE4, Metroid Prime) or on games that were exploding in price (Chibi Robo). Having taken a liking to retro gaming again in 2021, I had noticed quite the discrepancy between Japanese and overseas prices. The fact of the matter is (which I’ll go into detail in a future article), there was never a retrogame boom in Japan. Games on older systems tend to be incredibly cheap, and even after opening borders again in 2022, the language barrier tends to keep many people from buying them.

That’s when I noticed I had a choice to make. If I wanted to sell my games back home but still wanted to play those old games I had, I had to buy a Japanese Gamecube. So, in 2021 I did, and I slowly started to collect games for it. To be honest, it wasn’t a hard choice to make. So many games on the Japanese Gamecube were (and still are) around 480 yen to 1100 yen complete ($3.25-$7.50). I even found some for as low as 270 yen. In fact the most I’ve spent on a Gamecube game here was probably probably 3500 yen ($25) on Biohazard 2. My entire Japanese Gamecube collection (including Super Smash Bros which I forgot to put in this picture) probably cost less than $200 over a 2 year period of time.

Another reason I wanted to pick up a Japanese Gamecube is because of the Gameboy Player. It allows you to play Gameboy and Gameboy Advance games on your Gamecube, regardless of if they are Japanese or English. While this item is kind of hard to find overseas (it goes for $150-200 complete for the USA version), it’s rather easy to find in Japan. Having recently started streaming, I wanted to not only stream these Japanese versions of Gamecube games, but I also wanted to stream my Gameboy and Gameboy advance games. I managed to snag this complete version for 9800 yen ($68) before the borders in Japan opened to tourists again, but since I started my retro game treasure hunting I’ve seen many others in the wild. They might be uncommon but are not impossible to find.

The Journey Continues

While this should bring all my readers up to date about my gaming exploits over the years, the gaming journey is far from over. I plan on eventually getting a Playstation 5 as my backlog of older games goes down and I save up money for one, and when Switch 2 comes out you can guarantee I’ll have one. I’m happy to have shared where I started and where I came from, but what I’m most looking forward to is where I will go with all of you readers. These are only the first steps in The Japan Hobbyist’s new direction on the website. I hope to give weekly updates on various topics related to gaming in Japan. As I stated in my other article, I would like to make reviews of retro stores, guides on how to buy games in Japan, teach you all Japanese words to help you in your own retro game adventures or with playing games in Japanese, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The website should continue to go strong for a very long time. I hope you’ll be with me for it!

But wait, there’s more!

Do you like this type of content and want to see more? Be sure to let me know by joining me on various social media and dropping me a line. I hope to bring hundreds of articles to this website about not only about my gaming experiences, but also about gaming in Japan, game collecting, and even game stores over here! If you plan on visit and are big into gaming (be it on modern systems or retro ones), be sure to bookmark this website and stop back from time to time for updates!

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