Tales of Console Collecting – Megadrive collecting and retro shopping in Norwich

I’ve never really talked much about my console collecting as my blog is predominantly about arcade gaming.  I had a Pal Megadrive back in the day and sold it to focus on Japanese games.  The games run at 60Hz and have no borders, and I considered the box art vastly superior.  For me these were the definitive versions.  Back then I was regularly going to Japan and bringing back as many games as I could.  I remember one evening before a flight back home, I was packing my cases, ran out of room, and I had to make a mad dash into Chiba to buy a new case.  I went through a lot of clothes during this period as I frequently had to leave most of them behind!

I pretty much still have all these games and have amassed quite a large collection over the years.  It’s far from a complete collection though, comprising of games I thought I’d enjoy and ones I found appealing.

So what’s this got to do with retro game shopping in Norwich?  Well, I’ve started to pick up some Pal games.  This was triggered by Urban Strike.  I have Jungle and Desert Strike, and I really wanted to complete the Megadrive Strike trilogy.  However it turns out Urban Strike never received a Japanese release.  I saw the Pal release at the Norwich Gaming Market and snapped it up.  This got me thinking about other games I want to play and have in my collection, but were never released in Japan.  Looking into it a little bit more, the absence of some titles in Japan is certainly strange.  Take Konami’s Sunset Riders, and Capcoms’s Saturday Night Slam Masters and The Punisher for example.  Great games produced by Japanese companies, but no Japanese release.  Maybe it was because these came out late in the console’s life, and the Megadrive wasn’t as big in Japan.  VR Troopers is another oddity.  It’s a versus fighting game, developed in the UK and based on the TV show by Saban.  However it was never released in Japan, which is somewhat surprising given its Japanese roots.  Admittedly I’ve never played the game, and I don’t know how good it is.

With this in mind, I’ve decided to expand upon my Megadrive collection with the following loose guidelines.

1. Games I want to play and have in the collection, but were never released in Japan.

2. Games I really love which have alternative cover art and/or other regional differences, e.g. I’m a big Splatterhouse fan, and I really like the cover art on the Pal version.  Also being a massive OutRun fan I want the Pal version.

3. Games I want to play, but were released in Japan in comparatively small numbers and are expensive compared to the Pal version, e.g. Judge Dredd and Comix Zone.  Whilst I like these games, I simply don’t like them enough to justify the much higher cost of the Japanese versions.

4. Games which I had in my original Pal Megadrive collection back in the day (thankfully I didn’t have that many!).

I visited two retro game shops in Norwich in order to pick up a few titles.  As usual I went off on a bit of a tangent, picking up some items I never knew I wanted!

Regenerating Gaming

My first stop, and I didn’t pick up any Megadrive games here.  They have a pretty good stock of titles, but unfortunately the ones I was interested in weren’t complete or in the condition I wanted.  Here are some pics of the shop.

However I did pick up some great condition Master System games, including OutRun, OutRun Europa and some arcade conversions.

Next Level Games

In this shop I picked up a couple of Megadrive titles, and there were some nice surprises.

I thought this LCD game shelf was pretty cool.

I was very surprised to see some Japanese Famicom games on the shelf. 

I asked the shop owner about them.  Apparently someone had picked them up from Trader in Akihabara, but couldn’t get their Famicom to work in the UK and so traded them in.  It did raise a smile when he mentioned Trader.  I loved game shopping in the Trader stores and it seemed strange that these games have made the journey all the way from Japan to this retro game shop in Norwich.  The boxed games were Double Dragon II, Space Invaders and The Transformers: Convoy no Nazo, translated as Mystery of Convoy.  I had no idea about the latter, but it’s Transformers and the box art is cool.  

Here are my pick ups.  I’m especially pleased with the Famicom games and the Pac-Land LCD.  There is also a Splatterhouse one which I’d love to own.  Reading about The Transformers online, the game is a side scrolling and vertical scrolling platform game, impossibly difficult and by all accounts not very good!  I’m keen to give it a go and see for myself.