Akihabara Wasn’t The Best Place For Retro Game Shopping In Japan

Akihabara has long been known as one of the best places to buy retro video games in Tokyo, Japan. Given the nickname of “Electric Town,” the district is rife with stores selling trading cards, video games, figures, and gachapon, alongside plenty of arcades. It’s also home to the world-famous Super Potato.

A little-known fact about me is that I have a fairly healthy collection of retro video game stuff. I own every Nintendo and PlayStation console and a smattering of other consoles, like the Sega Dreamcast, with dozens of old games. Of course, this meant that during my recent trip to Japan, I had to see what the area had to offer. And, while I wasn’t disappointed, there were better places to buy old games.

Akihabara Electric Town Vibes

Like almost everywhere I visited in Japan, I loved the place. The atmosphere in Akihabara Electric Town was, well, electric. Neon lights lit up the streets, which were full of the stores that I was hoping and expecting to see, and a mixture of excited tourists and residents hopped from store to restaurant to arcade.

I went to the district with two goals: to grab some cool new Pokémon cards for my collection and bolster my retro game shelves a little. I achieved both, just not in the quantities I’d hoped for.

Super Potato And Other Stores

I felt like visiting Super Potato was a bit of a rite of passage. It’s a store well-known the world over for its collection of games and consoles, old and new. My excitement was palpable when visiting. When I stepped in, through its narrow corridors and stairways, the store felt like as much of a museum as it was a shop. Old memorabilia lined the walls, with photographs and autographs of famous visitors, like the one and only Hideo Kojima, sitting above the till points. Stacks of old games filled the shelves, and retro consoles were neatly displayed behind glass cabinets. It was exactly what I expected.

But the place had problems, and they were to be expected. During peak tourist season, which is when I went, it was nearly impossible to navigate Super Potato’s five floors of gaming goodness. The store isn’t blessed with floor space, and with its cultural and historical relevance, it was busy—like really busy.

Secondly, it wasn’t cheap. I wasn’t expecting prices to be groundbreaking, but they were definitely marked up versus some of the other stores I had visited around Tokyo, and I found this was a common theme throughout Akihabara.

I left Super Potato and Akihabara with a T-Shirt, a boxed copy of Star Fox 64 and unboxed copies of The Legend of the Mystical Ninja on SNES and Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon on the N64, two of my all-time favorites.

It was 100% worth the visit to soak in the atmosphere, see the sights and sounds and visit some famous stores, but it wasn’t as fruitful as I’d hoped.

The Final Haul And Where I Got It

I came away from Japan with eight boxed N64 games and one boxed from the Game Boy.

I picked up:

• Super Mario 64
• Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon
• Starfox 64
• Pokemon Stadium 2
• Donkey Kong 64
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
• Mario Kart 64
• Paper Mario
• Pokemon Blue

And I could have picked up a bunch more, but I had restraint (and no money left). While a couple of these games were, as I mentioned, from Super Potato, I picked the rest up from the wealth of other stores that Japan had to offer. Surugaya and Bookoff had comparable selections of games at slightly better prices and in far less busy stores.

If you’re planning a trip to Japan, I would sincerely recommend visiting Akihabara; however, if you have grand retro game shopping plans, be prepared for better deals elsewhere.