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Retro Japanese video games enjoy intergenerational revival

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The revival began around 2015 particularly in the West. The last 2 to 3 years there has been more interested in Famicom and Super Famicom amongst Japanese.

My son has got into older games but not Nintendo, he plays his Mega Drive at home and PSP when we go away, still plays his Switch a lot mind.

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The revival began around 2015 particularly in the West.

I got the famicon revival thing with the unfortunately tiny hardwired controllers that Nintendo brought out around then. I remember having to track one down, because they were sold out everywhere. The one with the HDMI connector, but lets you deliberately make the screen fuzzy to look like the 1990s.

If anyone has one, they were quickly cracked and you can put 600+ games on one. Something like 90% of the memory chip is unused by the 20 games they come installed with.

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The retro gaming in Japan is the best!!.

I love you Japan..

Please never change..

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I have a very early PacMan arcade game stored away to be restored.

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Second-hand goods trading retailers Bookoff Group Holdings Ltd and Geo Holdings Corp have separately developed consoles capable of playing old games for Nintendo Co's iconic Nintendo Entertainment System

I'm not sure I want to believe that. I have seen those exact consoles for a decade in their own bargain bins and "junk" sections, and they existed for another decade before that. They are called "Famiclones", essentially Famicom consoles on a single chip, and while they "work", they feel exactly as cheap as they are to produce. Not a pleasant experience.

But it's interesting that they push the "we produce our own retro consoles" angle. Hard Off nowadays is almost devoid of second-hand game cartridges, and I'm not even sure Geo ever sold them in the first place. Where would one get the games to play on their machines? What's their strategy there? Sell a console and then for the games shove the customers into Super Potato?

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Those games are really cool.

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This article's a bit in the thin side. As already pointed out, famiclones are nothing new, and a strong market for used stuff in Japan isn't exactly breaking news. Still, if this continued interest means that a lot of these classics are standing the test of time and will be enjoyed by future generations, then I'm all for it.

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