“What you want that for? That go outta style long time ago.” I clarified that no, I was actually looking for a game for the original Famicom, and to this day, I can still hear her hilarious answer: She said, “Yes, we have nine games for Super Famicom.” I had asked if they had any Famicom games, because I was looking for a specific game. My call was answered by a very nice Japanese lady who spoke broken English and at first couldn’t understand what I was asking for.
So I picked a place that had a small ad in EGM called Japan Video, located somewhere in Canada, because I think their ad said they had Famicom games. It wasn’t even yet known what form the console would take in the US: there were rumors of it being an add-on for the NES, or maybe a new console that would play both NES and SNES games, but nobody knew for sure. To give an idea of the precise point in time, the Genesis and TurboGrafx were out in the US, and the Super Famicom had just launched in Japan. Naturally, it followed that early adopters could also buy the Super Famicom and its paltry offering of launch software before it was released in the US.Īnyway, one day I thought I’d give one of these import game places a call and see if I couldn’t track down a copy of Gradius II.
Thus began the practice of import videogame collecting, adaptors (or simple physical console and cartridge modding), and new subculture among videogame enthusiasts. From what I remember, it wasn’t until Strider (and its surrounding hype - AN 8 MEG CARTRIDGE!!) came out on the Sega Mega Drive that import game purveyors began appearing in the pages of gaming magazines, promising rabid Genesis owners that for a little extra (and the purchase of an adaptor), they could play the Japanese version of this and many other games before they were available in the US. It wasn’t like today, where you can hop on ebay and spend a few bucks and have a rainbow of multicolored Famicom cassettes delivered to your door before you know it. At the dawning of the 16-bit era, import videogames were a practically mythical: previewed and reviewed by videogame mags, but unavailable to the average American gamer unless you actually visited Japan or you had some contacts over there.
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