I'm planning on collecting some super Famicom games and eBay appears to be a decent resource at a glance. Why are these games so much cheaper than their American counterparts? What exactly does G86 mean? Does anyone have any advice for buying Japanese snes games from eBay?
For the most part, people aren't as interested in Japanese language games with no translation, or the mutilation of their SNES console to play them (people who use clones/emulation don't tend to care about anything beyond the big name games). Especially RPGs, nobody wants to play the import when it's untranslated
No idea what G86 means, but the reason they're so much cheaper is because collecting is more of a western thing. Japan doesn't have the same nostalgiaboner about old games that we do.
As for tips, my advice is start collecting ASAP. If prices for western games get any more inflated, there's a good chance people will abandon it and start flocking to the Japanese market. Also, look to see if there's a Japanese imports store in your town. I found SMB3-J for $10 at mine, and since there's no shipping to pay, you can see how the savings add up.
I recommend Super Metroid and all the bomberman games. Super Metroid is completely in English even in the famicom version.
How hard would it be to patch an English Rom on famicom/pal snes games? I assume it would require opening them up and swapping out chips? Cant just flash an image to the original?
>>3226926
Well, if you're willing to use a Retron5, you can manually apply translation patches with the files on an SD card
>>3226849
Less demand, plus hoarders & market manipulation aren't as much of a problem in Japan.
>>3226849
Space in Japan is tight, people don't have the space to hoard games so there are plenty of small game shops and they aren't stupid about pricing (See: America)
>>3226849
Games are cheaper here because: It's a smaller market. There are more games because they're treated well, not thrown away. Kids can't afford huge basements to collect them in.
G86 means lots of things. Context?
My only advice on eBay is to avoid it.
I recently sold my entire Super Nintendo collection to replace it with Super Famicom games instead for this very reason. I absolutely could not stand the pricing for the SNES. I got the Famicom and all my games boxed and I still turned a profit from the SNES collection.
>>3226926
The originals don't use flash memory. They use ROM chips, which means the 0s and 1s are physically burnt into silicon. Once you've burnt a ROM chip, there's no going back.
If you're gonna resort to buying imports of games already released in your territory and language, then you're better off just emulating.
>>3227857
Only thing worse than a pathological collector is a poor pathological collector.
>>3226926
Gaaaaaaaaah
Just use a Flashcart for the non chip games, and learn moonrunes for Mario RPG
>>3226926
You have to put silicon paste on the EPROM to fill in the 1 and 0s. Then you can plug it right into the appropriate slot on any Windows motherboard and use an EPROM burning software.
