A good 9-10 years ago in university I used to hang out in Akiba all the time and bought all kinds of cool stuff there, but it's a really different place now. I still like to hang out there because the arcades are good and it's fun to look around at stuff, but I rarely buy anything.
If you wanna make some decent purchases I would recommend either Trader or Mandrake. Their prices are fair for things that aren't always so easy to find. Even in the past couple years I've gotten some decent mid-tier stuff there at good prices.
On the subject of Super Potato specifically, I think the place was far less well known 10 years ago and the prices and deals you could get there reflected that. It was one of the best places to get deals on hardware back then, and it's actually where I bought my AES. But the place became kind of well known on the internet, especially in the west, and now it's nothing but a tourist destination. In fact, I swear 50% of the people I see shopping in there are foreigners. At this point the only people actually purchasing things from the place are tourists that don't know how jacked up the prices are.
That said, the little retro arcade above Super Potato (which didn't exist a decade ago) is one of my favorite places to hang out in Akiba and just kick back and relax. The selection of legit games isn't the greatest, but the place has a really great atmosphere with a cool retro dagashi store and it's got a legit DDP and Splatterhouse so I'm always happy to stop by for a couple credits. It's also one of the few places where you can just sit on the bench and loiter a bit and no one will mind. So yeah, I still hit up potato a lot, but not for the same reasons I once did.
rancor wrote:If you're looking to Akiba to do your used game shopping, you're going to be sorely disappointed in 2016. That place is more of a tourist trap than ever before, and gets worse with each passing year. I don't believe I've even been there in the last 2 months.. There's no point.
To get the goods these days, you need a car and a map of the countryside.
Seeing as I'll be moving to Tokyo in like 4 days, can you give me any tips or recommendations of places to get cheap stuff in or around the city? It would be nice to hear from someone more knowledgeable about the current state of affairs there. You also said Narashino was your stomping ground right? Aside from that badass arcade in Tsudanuma, any shops I should be hitting up?
I know back in the day way down in Southern Bumfuck Chiba in a place called Hamano there was an absolutely epic game/comic store the size of a K-Mart. The staff was too lazy to price half the shit and would just give you things you found unpriced for 100 yen. Thanks for funding my AES collection Hamano! I wonder if that place is still around...
