Places to buy Doujin shooters ???

[Psikyo Gamefan]

I've been looking around this site and found himeyashop.com .
Are there other places to purchase these games ???
I'm really interested in the Artesneit shooters as well. They have links to buy from DLsite.com on their website, and it seems like I could possibly wade through it in Japanese ,but I would prefer to buy from a site in English if possible.
The ones from Himeya are Packaged games, correct ? I wouldn't mind spending a little extra over download prices for full packaging.
It's kind of hard to tell what's freeware and whats proper releases when you're looking around the web with the genre, and I would be more than happy to support the games I like with purchases.
I've been a shooter fan all my life(and have 22 systems to prove it), but I'm totally new to the genre on PC, and it looks like there's a ton of great stuff.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks !

[Aisha]

For stores that sell physical copies of games internationally, I know of Paletweb, HimeyaShop, and J-List. They are in English too (or Engrish, in Paletweb's case). W-Canvas used to ship internationally, and they still might, but I haven't checked in a very long time.

DLsite has an English side, but it doesn't offer nearly as much content as the Japanese side. Artesneit only offers his art for purchase from the English site, unfortunately. To buy his games, your best bet is to wade through the Japanese. You can probably find a guide online to walk you through the process. Coincidentally, I'm also thinking about buying some of his games, particularly Yakouga 1 and 3.

Then you have stores like Melonbooks, Tora no Ana, DigiKet, dmm.co.jp, Messe Sanoh, and so forth. These stores offer either physical items, digital distribution, or both. I might be wrong, but I believe that none of them actually ship internationally. Furthermore, not all of them allow foreign customers to buy things through their digital distribution platforms (Melonbooks is the exception, I think). To buy from these stores, you will probably need to use a postal forwarding service, which will add to your expenses, or find someone in Japan willing to buy your shit and mail it to you. Yahoo Auction Japan is also a good source of getting doujin games, but a lot of sellers don't ship internationally so you'll need to use one of the aforementioned workarounds, if possible; it's also not like your money will be going to the authors in this case, but at least you'll be getting what you want. It's probably easier to get Artesneit stuff through DLsite because these sites are also in Japanese and are more difficult to buy from.

You might get lucky and find what you want on eBay as well, or even this site's trading board.

Lastly, if you know someone who is going to the biannual Comiket, give them a shopping list if they are willing to suffer through the heat and crowds of tens of thousands of people to buy things for you.

Most doujin games are not freeware, and are prone to going out of print unless they are offered digitally. If you want to find out whether something is freeware or not, go to the author's website. Look for links to stores and words like taikenban/体験版, which would indicate the presence of trial versions.

[Warp_Rattler]

I can vouch for Paletweb, as I've used them several times. Their site design is horrible and more than a little dodgy-looking, but they reply to e-mails promptly, do a good job packaging their shipments, and they'll sometimes even hunt down titles for you that they don't carry in the store, depending on availability. Also, their prices are much cheaper than Himeyashop's, which always seemed ridiculously inflated even for the "Japanese gaming middleman" industry.

Also I do recall maybe last summer seeing an article somewhere about a Japanese dude who was offering purchasing services at Comiket for foreigners. His rates seemed pretty reasonable, though he would of course be subject to quantity limitations etc. I really can't remember where I saw this, but it might be something worth looking up if you're really set on a Comiket exclusive.

[cfx]

.

[beam]

There's Eurotaku, a great shop with many doujins available.
DHM Interactive translated 2 doujin games in english : Gunners Heart and Chantelise
Rockin Android is now the main english publishing doujin games company with many games under their belt.
Recettear will be available soon in english (download only).
Curious Factory is another doujin translating company with some shmups available in download form only.

[Warp_Rattler]

Does Paletweb still use some sort of not-nice iframe programming to deliver hidden and/or popup ads on their site? I found this a couple of years ago and refused to visit the site after that or order from them. The ads seemed legit and not malware (I remember being redirected to I think Wrangler for example) but the adserver on Palet's page was a site that google had flagged as dangerous. A google search at the time turned up someone else talking about this so I wasn't the only one who experienced it.

It's not my intent to slander them but I'm just reporting what happened to me.

That's really weird--I've been using them off and on for about four years, and never ran into any sort of weird ads of any sort, popup or not. It might be something from before I started using the site; in any case, the problem definitely no longer exists there now.

[E. Randy Dupre]

Paletweb has a presence on eBay, too, like most online stores nowadays. I don't know if they offer their full range of items there, though, or just select bits and pieces.

[Psikyo Gamefan]

Thanks for all the great responses.
Eurotaku has some great stuff, but it said to email them to see if they will send to the USA(which sucks as I had some good stuff in the cart).
Paletweb seems good, but the only shooters they have are the S.Alice stuff.

[Psikyo Gamefan]

The Curious Factory stuff looks really cool for $10 a pop.

[beam]

The Curious Factory stuff looks really cool for $10 a pop.

The dev home page is there.
There are many free games to download, some of them quite fun like Demolition Gunner :In Seek And Destroy or Tank Domination. Older games are on a second page.
Enjoy