Akihabara and the Cover Art Recognizer

I've been frequenting Akihabara since 2005. 

Too long, and it's gotten to the point where I've become an intolerable hang. Come to Akiba with me, and you'll quickly tire of me pointing at souvenir shops or chain cafes and explaining how they used to be game stores, full of delights. It's a constant trip down memory lane.

Pointing and mumbling - remembering something. Something better.

See that store full of loli-perv crap over there? They used to have stacks of Saturn games for ¥10 each. And loli-perv crap, obviously.

That shithole over there once sold wigs and Mega Drive games. And the second floor hobby-store across the road was once my favourite game shop. A huge floor space, packed to the rafters with titles from every gen, and inexpensive to boot.  

That laptop-recycle store by the station? That spot was occasionally manned by a benevolent spirit who dispensed dead-stock Game Gear Games.

I wipe away a tear and resume frowning at a ¥1700 copy of Final Fantasy VII.

Akiba aside, I've been going to out-of-town recycle stores for the best part of twenty years. In and out of Book Offs and Hard Offs. I am a seasoned veteran of JUNK. The OLD SOFT-knower, the back-street navigator, and other things that sound vaguely like sexual euphemisms but are not. No one has been flashed the crossed-forearm gesture at the counter more than me, as the shop staff explains "No Guarantee" as I pay for my latest junk purchase. 

I know, Taka. You've told me a million times before. And speak Japanese, yeah?

So what have these years gained me, besides shelves full of games, a handful of other game-degenerate friends, and the ability to talk the ears off anyone brave enough to accompany me on a shopping trip? Well, more than anything, thanks to all that time perusing games, I now have an in-depth knowledge of cover art. I can identify a frightening number of games just by glancing at a tiny part of their cover artwork, as it pokes out from a junk bin or stands out just a fraction from a shelf.

Much like a vinyl pervert rummaging through record crates, I look for visual clues so that I can make a split-second decision about what is or isn't worth pulling out and investigating. I work at a 90-Saturn-games-per-minute pace - a third of that with Nintendo games. From the moment I enter the store, I'm clocking displays and picking out familiar colours and shapes, deciding where to look and where to ignore. And in the junk bins, I'm flicking through disorganized dumps of multi-format titles like a man who has somewhere else to be. 

Mech head, red eyes, white background. Right, that's Lost Planet 2.

Blond hair, light sword; lots of blues. I should really play my copy of El Shaddai some day.

PSP, Nakamura Shunsuke; Zico's shoulder. Yeah, Winning Eleven 9. If that's priced at more than ¥100, I'm leaving the shop immediately.

I can read Japanese well enough, but reading spines is for losers. Covers is where it's at.

On my most recent trip to Akiba, a poor visit shopping-wise, it dawned on me that I perpetually have a pained look on my face when perusing games. The source of this displeasure is usually exorbitant pricing. When I see an especially offensive price - say ¥2500 for Sonic Adventure - I let out a little laugh of indignation. A scoff. Sometimes I loosen my mask a little, so perhaps the person next to me will hear and recognize that I am an expert. Insufferable.

I stopped by a media recycle store yesterday. Local-ish, and out of the way. A twenty minute walk from the train station along a busy road, through a neighborhood of rusting warehouses and decaying infrastructure. They had a larger selection of retro games than I'd expected, and a junk bin where I could put my cover-art skills to use, but everything was double what I felt comfortable paying. As I was in the neighborhood, I also stopped by Hard Off, which must be the worst branch I've ever been in. Most of the games are sun-faded, and everything is overpriced. Even the junk bins are rotten, filled with nothing but 90s-2000s baseball games and duplicates of PSP Monster Hunters.

I didn't spend long in either location. I rummaged, I scanned cover art, and I felt blessed to have bought most of my retro-wants in the mid-late 2000s. A time of plenty, and a time of far more reasonable prices.

On the walk back to the train station, I pointed at a coffee shop that probably used to be something else. Something better, I assumed.