Archive for the ‘From Japan with Love’ Category
Rising Stuff Renewed (Like A Rising Phoenix of Stuff)
As I am sure most of you have noticed that there have not been many updates to the main page lately. That is because Alex and I have been hard at work behind the scenes making the store a better place. 3 days ago we put up the brand new Rising Stuff storefront. You will notice these changes:
1. It is much faster
2. The checkout system is streamlined and easier to use
3. Prices have been lowered on more than 300 items!
4. New items being added everyday.
So if you haven’t seen the store recently, check it out.
Unfortunately, with the new site you all will have to make new accounts, but that process is quicker than ever too. If you have any questions at all please check out our support forum. We are working had to make your retro game shopping experience as easy and enjoyable as possible.
Dreamcast Price Guide
We’ve had this guide up on our forums for awhile, but we figured we should make it public knowledge now that it’s been reviewed by our membership. Prepare yourself for the magic of… The Dreamcast Import Price Guide!
Better English Through Video Games
I wrote this piece a few years ago for another site. My Job and contract have changed since then and I teach my classes now with a mixture of English and Japanese. But I thought it was still somewhat interesting and perhaps even entertaining. I hope you enjoy it.
Step-by-step Instructions for How to Mod your Super Nintendo to Play Super Famicom Games
Mobiusclimber of the Rising Stuff Forums has created this simple and straight forward guide to one of the quickest mods you can do: Make your SNES play Super Famicom games! Don’t worry, it will still play your Super Nintendo games perfectly and the modification will not be visible on the outside of your console.
Standard Disclaimer: Mod your Super Nintendo at your own risk. We are not responsible for damaged consoles.
How the Housing Crisis Made Import Games Cost More
It’s been a hard year for a lot of industries. Major layoffs have been an almost daily occurrence over the past few months as companies grasp to regain balance in a troubled market. The paltry value of the dollar is a somber reflection of this.
In contrast, Japan, despite a troubled economy itself has seen the value of its currency, the yen, gain value over every single major currency. Investors bringing funds home from overseas and Japan’s culture of conservative investment strategies have worked to Japan’s advantage by minimizing potentially shattering losses. The yen has increased in value nearly 25% over the dollar, 35% over the euro, and a startling 66% against Brazil’s real.
But… What does this mean for gamers? Simply, it means just about anything coming from the Land of the Rising Sun is going to cost more. To be precise, up to about 25% more in America and 35% more in Europe; the same amount the yen increased over each currency.
Famicom Price Guide
Here we are again all you information seekers! This time we’re releasing the Famicom price guide. Instead of the usual method of posting it here in the blog, I’m going to link to our forum section containing the guide. The reasons for this are twofold:
1. I don’t want to keep the list updated in two different places.
2. If I did post the entire price guide here it would make most browsers and slower computers cry.
So if you’re looking to find out the values of your favorite games, hop on over to our Famicom Price Guide!
Virtual Boy Price Guide
We’ve been getting a lot of requests for more price guides lately. Seems people are finding them somewhat useful! That’s enough to make us happy. We have several others in the works right now (Famicom, Dreamcast, and others) so today we’ll be bringing you one of our smaller, more humble guides: Virtual Boy. This system never really saw a lot of love. It got a lot of support initially, but developers were quick to pull out as the system’s sales never took off. This resulted in a really wild assortment of prices. Games tend to either be very cheap, or very expensive.
So without further ado, here is the price guide!
The Nintendo DSi and Pachinko
Right now in my town, the new Nintendo DSi is completely sold out. The game stores don’t have any in stock nor do the toy stores. I noticed this, but it’s not very important to me. I don’t feel I am stylish enough to own a DSi. The DSi is so sleek and cool that it would make the rest of my possessions look shabby in comparison. I don’t need that kind of stress in my life. However, if I DID want to buy one, there is still one place I could get it. I could go to a pachinko parlor.
This Week on the Storefront: Restocking and Games of First Love
This week Rising Stuff did most of it’s work behind the scenes. With more orders coming in than ever before, we needed to reorganize our stock rooms. We are in the process of putting everything in alphabetical order. When we were only dealing with an inventory of around 2000 items it was enough to sort them simply by console but now as we have pretty much doubled our inventory in the last few months we needed a better system.
Also this week we started getting the first shipments of what will be growing Playstation and 3DO sections. Look for these to be going up on the site soon.
And then there is our ongoing battle to keep PC-FX games in stock. We keep reordering them but often they are sold before our shipments even arrive. We were, however, able to restock 12 titles this week and every PC-FX game should be back in stock in the next two weeks. That is if people stop buying them the moment we list them. Along with the PC-FX restocks we were also able to get something our store hasn’t had before:
This game is called Zoku Hatukoi Monogatari-syugaku ryokou and it is a very adorable simulation game. A young boy and girl are in love and you nurture that relationship through several stages of life. The characters start out in elementary school and you follow their lives though middle school, high school and college. I’m a fan of the art style myself. What’s more, this copy that we acquired comes with the original VHS video released by NEC to promote this game. We will sell them both as a set when we get around to listing them.
The Strange Case of 8-Bit RPG Name Length
Today I will bring everyone back to the 8-bit era. Do you remember? Ok, I’ll try to help. The “New Kids on the Block are topping the charts. The Internet was still text based and primarily used only by universities. Akihito becomes Emperor of Japan following the death of Hirohito, thus beginning the Heisei period. The Berlin Wall was torn down ending the cold war. And the word “tubular” was said without sarcasm.
This is when I first started to play RPG video games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior. I loved these games. But you know what always annoyed me? My name has 5 letters in it. 5. Now that is not a long name by any means, but it was too long for many 8-bit Nintendo games. Yup, the dreaded 4 letter limit. (Or five letters in the Zelda series).
