Steven wrote: ↑Tue Feb 10, 2026 11:32 amThese guys seriously want 60 bucks for an acrylic block with a picture of a game's instruction card...
Oops. Time for Faith to make another post in "stupid STG things you buy" thread me guess :p
.....you mean that the whole point of STGs is not to buy a bunch of stupid stuff and a million games and suck so badly at all of them that you never make it past stage 2? Guess I've been doing it wrong the whole time...
Faith wrote: ↑Thu Feb 12, 2026 4:01 am(But... maybe price increased? Of course, not know what currency you talk? But I assume US? If US, quite sure I "only" paid half of that lol.)
1 yen in Japan has the purchasing power of about 1 cent in the USA, so given that and the 6100 price, which is absolutely ridiculous BTW, that's roughly equivalent to spending 61 bucks for the same thing if you bought the same thing in the USA with USD. Purchasing power parity is different from the exchange rate, but that's basically how it works.
Steven wrote: ↑Thu Feb 12, 2026 5:11 am
1 yen in Japan has the purchasing power of about 1 cent in the USA
Jesus... my Japan holidays are about half as expensive as yours. Exchange rate yen to Euro is 100 yen to 55 Eurocents.
BIL wrote: ↑Sun Jun 02, 2024 11:01 pm
Imagine a spilled cup of coffee totalling your dick and balls in one shot, sounds like the setup to a Death Wish sequel.
Yep, that's basically exactly how it works when you factor in the exchange rate lol. I pay full price for everything but people who get paid in other currencies pay half price. It sucks, and it works the other way too because I literally cannot afford to go overseas or import anything because my money is worthless outside of Japan, as everything increases in price by about 50%.
That's one way to think about it but the other way I think about it is that living in Japan puts you in on the ground floor so you can get stuff naturally without having to you know, pay for flights and hotels and be here at the right time and place to buy whatever silly things you might want. Also helpful is the abundance of second hand shops and still prevalant physical media shops.
These acrylic stands and things seem to be a thing for some reason. Bandai flog these things like crazy for Gundam and their other anime. Must cost them pennies to produce.
Steven wrote: ↑Thu Feb 12, 2026 7:32 am
Yep, that's basically exactly how it works when you factor in the exchange rate lol. I pay full price for everything but people who get paid in other currencies pay half price. It sucks, and it works the other way too because I literally cannot afford to go overseas or import anything because my money is worthless outside of Japan, as everything increases in price by about 50%.
Oh, it says location: Tokyo right under your name, I missed that.
Yeah, not getting to go abroad or at least having to save for quite a while for it sucks, but living in Japan is its own thing/ experience quite apart from the advantages tzm_rade talked about. You get things a tourist will never find out about.
BIL wrote: ↑Sun Jun 02, 2024 11:01 pm
Imagine a spilled cup of coffee totalling your dick and balls in one shot, sounds like the setup to a Death Wish sequel.
ChurchOfSolipsism wrote: ↑Thu Feb 12, 2026 10:03 pmYou get things a tourist will never find out about.
Haha, yes... and, unfortunately... still many in Japan who refuse to even sell to gaijin >.<!~
I have a Japanese friend with small "side hustle" in Japan buying things for gaijin and help ship out of country too and she say she even had problem where one shop find out and now doesn't want to do business with her lol!!! Sometimes they can be "a bit" weird like they do not want $$$!~
ChurchOfSolipsism wrote: ↑Thu Feb 12, 2026 10:03 pmYou get things a tourist will never find out about.
Haha, yes... and, unfortunately... still many in Japan who refuse to even sell to gaijin >.<!~
I have a Japanese friend with small "side hustle" in Japan buying things for gaijin and help ship out of country too and she say she even had problem where one shop find out and now doesn't want to do business with her lol!!! Sometimes they can be "a bit" weird like they do not want $$$!~
No doubt at least some of the Japanese can be racist dickheads
BIL wrote: ↑Sun Jun 02, 2024 11:01 pm
Imagine a spilled cup of coffee totalling your dick and balls in one shot, sounds like the setup to a Death Wish sequel.
Well, I could not go today because I had work and they closed before we did again.
Guess what? I probably can't go tomorrow because I have work tomorrow too. I may be able to go on Monday, provided they are actually open, and of course I won't want to go because the last thing I want to do on days where I don't have to go to the shithole that is Shibuya for work is to go to the shithole that is Shibuya for some other purpose.
Yes. It's filthy, smelly, overcrowded, noisy, a tourist trap, has a billion clothes stores and I don't care about fashion, has a billion clubs and bars and I don't drink alcohol (it should be banned globally) or go to clubs, the station sucks because it's always under construction and sometimes you'll go there and your usual staircase or exit may suddenly cease to exist, those Mario Kart bastards operate nearby and they add to the noise both through their vehicles' engines and with their annoying yelling, and all of the damn tourists are always walking around with their fucking phones out taking videos of you and everyone else (which I believe is illegal, as it is considered an invasion of privacy if done without permission) or blocking the path inside the station with their ridiculously massive suitcases. Why the hell do people even have suitcases large enough to fit several small children inside them in Shibuya anyway? Most of this applies solely to the west side. Three good things on west side: Ikebe Gakki, Mega Donki, and Tower Records. Maybe add Toho Cinemas to that list if you want to go watch movies... which I don't.
Shibuya fucking sucks. East side is not so bad, though. I'll still take Shibuya over Roppongi (not Roppongi Hills, that place is like the most upscale area in the whole country) and Shinjuku, which are even worse.
Steven wrote: ↑Sat Feb 14, 2026 12:53 pmhas a billion clubs and bars and I don't drink alcohol (it should be banned globally)
Haha, not everyone who drinks, is crazy trashy drunk :p
I drink almost every day, but, at comfort of own home, with hubby... just small amounts to relax a bit. But I also hate clubs... and most bars >.<"... my one small sin!!~
>Roppongi
Hahaha... because that place... even more bars, yes???~
BIL wrote: ↑Sun Jun 02, 2024 11:01 pm
Imagine a spilled cup of coffee totalling your dick and balls in one shot, sounds like the setup to a Death Wish sequel.
CIT wrote: ↑Mon Feb 16, 2026 7:42 am
His Japanese is excellent! Much better than mine, hehe.
Damn, nice CIT! Now that's statesmanship.
(we just need to get Rob on your next flight out with a dossier of vintage CAVE v Psikyo/Takumi bunfights, so IKD can be briefed on the fiery yore of shumpsfarm realpolitik! we'd be branded international pariahs for annoying a living legend, next stop: mainstream infamy and mad page hits )
Haha! I think I already did my best to annoy the hell out of him with all my questions about when we'll see a new game or updated Mushi Futari and Guwange ports.
With IDK-san holding his ace cards close to his chest, he ain't gonna reveal just exactly what they are in regards to what future Cave stg title are coming down the road -- very wise business decision to do so. I'm sure it was nice to try to pry some little nugget of insider information from the likes of IDK-san, CIT, but "no dice, no cigar" this time around, right?
Yeah, it'd be quite something if Cave Co. Ltd. were to release another dedicated arcade pcb kit for ol' times sake (aside from the Cave Exa-Arcadia releases) but that's just wishful thinking as it is -- with the Cave CV-1000 DoDonpachi Sai-Dai-Ou-Jou jamma pcb kit being the very last one to released/sold back in 2012 with an MSRP of $2,400 usd brand new.
PC Engine Fan X! wrote: ↑Mon Feb 16, 2026 4:10 pm
With IDK-san holding his ace cards close to his chest, he ain't gonna reveal just exactly what they are in regards to what future Cave stg title are coming down the road -- very wise business decision to do so. I'm sure it was nice to try to pry some little nugget of insider information from the likes of IDK-san, CIT, but "no dice, no cigar" this time around, right?
Yeah, it'd be quite something if Cave Co. Ltd. were to release another dedicated arcade pcb kit for ol' times sake (aside from the Cave Exa-Arcadia releases) but that's just wishful thinking as it is -- with the Cave CV-1000 DoDonpachi Sai-Dai-Ou-Jou jamma pcb kit being the very last one to released/sold back in 2012 with an MSRP of $2,400 usd brand new.
PC Engine Fan X! ^_~
WTF are you talking about? He's standing in a tiny shop full of stickers and posters; there's no "business decision" here, just desperate survival in the reality of waning relevance.
Formerly known as 8 1/2. I return on my second credit!
Have a look at Konami, Capcom and Sega and see how they use their back catalogue of IPs to pump out constant remakes, reboots, ports, collections, licensed out sequels etc. Konami are absolute kings of this low-risk IP use right now.
Honestly, and while I'm not saying it's a good thing or will produce quality titles, it's probably the best time in over a decade for CAVE to make a bit of a comeback even if it just means yearly ports, collections, maybe a horrible remake/sequel.
Hypothetically speaking if CAVE just re-released one of their unported (Steam) games (Guwange, Futari, etc.) but made it progression based with a world map (think like Cuphead, which only has an hour of content in credit feeding terms) it could probably sell like 3 times what their steam ports did. Especially if you broke it down very fine into like Super Meat Boy level segments, multiple difficulties, and added letter grading for score.
At this point it's just a bad business decision for a public company like CAVE to sit on IPs for years and do nothing with them. Konami who were practically out of the gaming biz for years are utilising their legacy IP quite effectively (as far as business goes. I won't make any comment on the quality of the products themselves.)
There has to have been someone at CAVE who has noticed this trend. I imagine this shop is just the start. Now really is the time to make it happen. They can put out games on Playstation, Switch, Xbox and PC and sell them in perpetuity. Literally every gaming and media company in Japan is doing this so it"s dumb that CAVE aren't doing it, too.
tzm_rade wrote: ↑Tue Feb 17, 2026 2:07 am
At this point it's just a bad business decision for a public company like CAVE to sit on IPs for years and do nothing with them. Konami who were practically out of the gaming biz for years are utilising their legacy IP quite effectively (as far as business goes. I won't make any comment on the quality of the products themselves.)
There has to have been someone at CAVE who has noticed this trend. I imagine this shop is just the start. Now really is the time to make it happen. They can put out games on Playstation, Switch, Xbox and PC and sell them in perpetuity. Literally every gaming and media company in Japan is doing this so it"s dumb that CAVE aren't doing it, too.
I imagine that there's a minimum price / copies sold you have to pay / sell in order to profit / break even when releasing on any official platform. (how much do they pay their employees?) In the case of shmups, 99% of re-releases can barely sell more than 10k copies even when sold at ~10 dollars. You have to be selling something with extreme nostalgia value to crack ~30k (Famitsu reported that Gradius Origins sold 25k physical) So it's really not reasonable to call it a bad business decision entirely. I imagine that the higher ups at CAVE really have no idea how to sell an arcade game properly (it's extremely odd to me how they refuse to implement features close to my ideas in anything other than shitty mobile ports) so in that case, they really may just be better off doing nothing if their real attempts will be the same stuff that has no appeal to anyone that isn't a superfan of the games.
In the 2010s, I would've agreed but in 2026 it's all about getting your stuff on as many platforms in as many forms as possible. Capcom do it, Sega do it, Square Enix do it, Konami do it, Sony even do it. Anything less is just mis-management for a publicly traded company with a lot of IPs like CAVE. Niche or not. Also their stock price is horrible while most Japanese gaming companies are doing pretty okay.
Konami don't even make the games anymore, they hand it off to someone else and then a Konami guy in a suit turns up in a Nintendo Direct or Sony State of Play and tells you how awesome Konami are and it works. Find me an example of CAVE even attempting to promote one the re-releases of their games by M2 or Live Wire. It's embarrassing.
I mean, sure, but all of that is still downstream of getting the games to sell in the first place. Re-releasing games without any reason to think they'd sell more is also a far worse option if the companies stocks are in bad shape, not the other way around. In my opinion the issue really lies first and foremost in actually presenting the games in a way which will even make "normies" capable of understanding the appeal, not marketing. We had a ton of shmup marketing 10 years ago with all of the new shmups on steam, and that did translate to good sales (Ikaruga 128k, CCWI 78k, Mushi 45k, all by 2018) but 99% of the people who bought those ports never actually appreciated the games, and never moved on to playing shmups after that, so there was no real point. What could CAVE even realistically do now in terms of marketing to get even a tenth of the buzz that there was back then? Compare to Zeroranger - the devs said in a recent talk they sold 45k and the game essentially plays very similar to most shmups just with progress saving.
| My games - 
Now that's statesmanship.
we'd be branded international pariahs for annoying a living legend, next stop: mainstream infamy and mad page hits 
)
