Retro Game Store Reviews: Osaka Edition – Super Potato Ota Road (Namba)
It might seem like this is another Surugaya store from the signage, but don’ be fooled. The store on the bottom there is a Super Potato. I’ve been to a total of 4 of their stores now all over Japan, and with one more to check out I have a pretty good opinion of the chain as a whole. I know that I give them a hard time because of their prices but every story needs a villain, or in this case, every blog article.
A little background about my life before we jump into today’s article though. My first ever trip to Japan was back in 2002 to Osaka during the Japan/Korea FIFA World Cup. I was visiting a childhood friend and his family who lived in the city and during my two week stay, one of those days was to Den Den town (Nipponbashi/Namba). Super Potato has been around for at least that long, and while I wasn’t a big fan of Japanese games back in the day, I did stop by this store along with a few others to wonder at their selection. I now visited it again, 23 years later, after having become a bit of a Japanese retro game connoisseur. How does it compare to my memories, as well as the other stores in the chain? Read on to find out.
The Selection
The selection at Super Potatoes is always their strong point, but to be honest I felt like this had one of the worst selections of all of them. Now I’m not saying it’s bad, but that the Nagoya, Akihabara, and Ikebukuro branches were all around better. Nagoya’s had a lot of depth and variety, as did Akihabara, and even Ikebukuro’s store made up for their small size with the depth of their selection. The Osaka store overall felt it was lacking. Perhaps it is because of retro game stores focusing on selling popular titles to tourists, like Pokemon and Mario titles, that it is pushing out the less popular or lesser known ones that don’t have a global appeal. I used to really enjoy the oddities you’d find, but nowadays their inventory feels more streamlined with more similar titles that sell well.
Nintendo
The loose/unboxed areas of Nintendo games are pretty well stocked at this Super Potato. They have a lot inventory but on a more recent visit to this store I noticed that there were growing holes in their stock. It seems like they’ve been doing a good job of selling titles that tourists want to take home with them, but they might be having trouble replacing them. I didn’t see that many Mario titles, Zelda was non existent, and even Metroid games were nowhere to be found. This store might be struggling with their stock these days, but they at least make a good effort at showcasing what they do have.
Sega, Sony, and others
Their Sega Dreamcast, Playstation 1, Playstation 2, and Sega Saturn collections were pretty good, but just as with the Nintendo products above, I noticed some holes with their rarer titles. Maybe it’s just the trend of them finally selling those games and the store deciding not to replace them because of how long they took to sell. Many of the higher traffic stores in bigger cities seem to adapting the strategy of only stocking the goods that are going to sell and sell quickly (I believe it’s call velocity of sales?) so they can sell through more product. It might just be that in the near future you’re only going to be able to buy rare games outside of cities.
The Pricing
While not all of their pricing is atrocious, the prices on hot items like Pokemon games are. The prices you see above were the most recent, taken a day before writing this article. While not as high as America’s retro game prices, Super Potato’s prices are the highest in Japan and there is still room to grow. This chain is the closest to US retro game pricing as their is. Their non-high volume games aren’t as expensive as the popular ones, but they are still much more than other shops. You will never find a good deal at a Super Potato.
Access
Super Potato is one of the best placed retro game stores in Namba and just around the corner from the Furuichi store I talked about in one of my previous articles. It’s very near the Nankai Namba station, but most people will be coming from the Midosuji subway line Namba station I believe. It’s only about 10 minutes walk from the later thankfully, so if you’re taking the subway from Shin-Osaka where the bullet train is, you shouldn’t have trouble finding it.
The Verdict
- Selection: 4.5/5
- Pricing: 2/5
- Ease of Access: 5/5
There are still places that sell games at higher prices that Super Potato, but they are in the top 5% of prices in Japan still. That alone hurts the store for most retro game hunters in Japan. But their strength of selection does tend to save them when people have exhausted all other methods of getting a game they want and can’t find it anywhere else. It’s also one of the retro game stores closest to the Namba area. It’s a fine place to walk around and admire, but I never see the place for anything other than window shopping. And while I gave them a pretty high rating for selection, this score could definitely go down if they don’t replenish their stock in the near future.
But wait, there’s more!
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