Manuel Bilderbeek
Thu, 13 Jul 2000 19:59:15 -0700
Hey ho, fellow MSX users, In this mail I want to give an example of the differences between Japan and Europe, considering computers/game consoles. A couple of days ago, I came across a computer game store, here in the village of Moriya. I saw a PS2 flag, so, curious as I am, I wanted to check out this PS2, before anyone else in Europe... ;-) I entered the shop and saw thousands of gamecartridges and a demo-PS2. Nice design machine, but the game running on it was not really interesting (some kind of VJ-game (which reminds me of a Konami arcade game here called Remix (or something) in which you can play DJ; the arcade machine has 2 turntables....!) all in Japanese). So I looked around in the shop. Also I saw a demo of Final Fantasy IX for PS. Great looking! Further, I saw PSone. This is a compact edition of a Playstation in a jolly colour (white and pink, IIRC). On tv there is a commercial for this in which a girl sews a nice backpack for her PSone and then you see here going to a friend (also with a PSone on her back) and go play together with one of the PSones. Funny. Price was about 15000 Yen (cheaper than the second hand MSXturboR ST I saw in Akihabara!). Then I saw a pile of used games. A LOT of Super Famicon (SNES) games and also quite some Famicon (NES) games. Also Gameboy of course and even some Neo Geo stuff. (All from wellknown softwarehouses, like Hudson Soft, ASCII, Konami, you know them!) BUT THEN! I saw in one of the racks some Famicon and Super Famicon systems for sale! NEW! Not the old ones; they had a new casing and a small, cheap box. So, IN JAPAN THE NES IS STILL SOLD! Looking at the large number of used NES games for sale, I'd say - although it is a terribly obsolete machine (sounds familiar?) - it is still somewhat popular in Japan. The Super Famicon is more popular though. So, also still new ones of that one available, but a HUGE amount of new and second hand games could be bought in this game shop. Also controllers and other stuff (like some joysticks made by ASCII). So, if ASCII plays it smart with this new MSX, it might even be succesful! Maybe this is hard to comprehend for European MSX users, but in Japan indeed the attitude is different. By the way, even my 41-year old boss was in a computer shop in the middle of the night when the PS2 was first released... :-) He bought it mainly for the DVD player though, as do many Japanese, I have the feeling. It is still very expensive though, 40000 Yen IIRC. In this particular shop it was easy to get though (some people here complained it was sold out everywhere!), they had at least 10 PS2 machines there. Anyway, this e-mail may change your point of view regarding the Japanese view on obsolete computers. (Although I don't understand it myself, since some guys here said Japanese only like the newest technology.... but it is a fact that there are still NEW NES systems sold...!) About the number of MSX users in Japan: I think the percentage is the same as in the Netherlands, but then consider the fact that Japan has 125 million people.... Best regards, Manuel --------------- PS: MSX 4 EVER! (Questions? See: http://www.faq.msxnet.org/) PPS: Visit my home page at http://bilderbeek.cjb.net/ **** MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes) in the body (not the subject) of the message. Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] More information on MSX can be found in the following places: The MSX faq: http://www.faq.msxnet.org/ The MSX newsgroup: comp.sys.msx The MSX IRC channel: #MSX on Undernet ****