Tokyo's Akihabara district is a hardcore retro collector's dream. CrunchGear has an interesting photo-piece up that lists the ten most expensive retro games you're likely to find in an Akihabara shop, and what I found interesting about it - and what the original article doesn't cover - is exactly what the most expensive games are like. For the retro titles from the VC systems, I thought I'd go over what I knew about how the games played, since... well, for some of these titles that anyone is willing to drop the equivalent of hundreds of dollars on them can be pretty baffling.
- San San: This Genesis game appears to be a simple simulator of the board game Go. I can't find out anything about it other than how expensive it is. Internet? What do you know?
- Gradius Archinmendes: The name of this game is translated more frequently as Gradius Archimedes, I believe. Here's what Hardcore Gaming 101 has to say bout it: "There was a special version released for the Famicom in Japan, called Gradius Archimedes Hen. This is a special promotion cartridge that was a tie-in with a ramen company. It's the same game, but all of the power up orbs have been replaced by floating bowls of noodles." Well, hell. I'd pay $470 for that. It's obviously the best version of NES Gradius ever.
- Kinnikuman: Known in the US as M.U.S.C.L.E., or "that weird NES game with the questionable controls and absolutely insane shit happening in the ring." This is actually a tie-in game based on the super-long-running manga & anime franchise Kinnikuman, so I imagine most of the high collector prices here are influenced by nostalgia and possibly a certain degree of cart rarity.
- Foreman For Real: This was sort of the Genesis's answer to Punch-Out. I've never played it, but bragging on Punch-Out or Super Punch-Out to a Genesis fanboy was sure to end in him bringing up Foreman for Real. I'm guessing it wasn't as good as Punch-Out, because it's an Acclaim game and when Acclaim made anything good it was generally divine intervention or an accident. I'm also guessing Acclaim's game distribution in Japan was pretty spotty, leading to cart shortages.
- Virtual Bart: Unless the Japanese version included the American voice clips or some other oddity, then this has to be proof that Acclaim just didn't get a lot of carts into Japan. This isn't the worst Simpsons game but it's not something you want to play much, either.
- Safety Rally: I don't know much about this game at all, although some sources claim it's one of the few NES titles to never be dumped to ROM form for illegal yet pervasive internet distribution. Has anyone out there played it?
- Tag Team Pro Wrestling Special: So this is actually one of the most primitive wrestling games for the NES (but early and therefore forgivable), Tag Team Wrestling. It's not something you buy to play, since its lustre wears off inside of five minutes. The "Special" I believe refers to a super-limited edition of the game issued for some promotion, but I don't know how many copies were issued or why. If you know, drop a comment.
- Darius Alpha: It's widely known that there are only 800-1000 copies of this game, which appears to be a boss rush mode for bosses from Darius Plus. It was apparently only offered as a mail-in bonus to people who bought both the HuCard and CD versions of Darius Plus, which are near-identical. Basically, this game exists to exploit the obsessive-compulsive fan, a function it fulfills to this day.
- Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam Hot Scramble Final Version: This is a limited pressing of the Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam Hot Scramble game, the first in a soon-to-be long-and-terrible line of console Gundam games. There are only 1000 copies of the Final Version, which has an interesting backstory. The Z Gundam game was one of the few Gundam titles with a certifiable strong designer behind it: Masanobu Endoh, who created Xevious. He wanted to create a game that focused on simulating the sensation of piloting a Mobile Suit by making the entire game take place from a first-person perspective. Bandai nixed this in the original version of Hot Scramble since first-person perspective would mean you'd never see the titular Z Gundam in action, just its control panel. So, Bandai forced the development team to add in some horrifically lame sidescrolling platformer sequences. Naturally, fans realized that the first-person sequences were inspired (and unlike anything else you could play at the time), while the platformer was a waste of time. The Final Version was issued specifically to remove the platformer segments, letting fans play a frankly superior game that consisted only of the challenging first-person segments. Between this legitimate gameplay difference and a recent wave of Gundam nostalgia in Japan (similar to the big boom in superhero movies over here), I can actully see why someone might want to drop over a thousand dollars on this one. It's basically the only time Bandai ever admitted they made a Gundam game needlessly shitty and tried to go back and fix it.
