AUSRETROGAMER

The Pop-Culture E-Zine

You are here: Home / Archives for Akihabara

Akihabara

The Doctor Goes Retro Gaming Shopping in Japan

By

Our resident doctor, Dr. Brant Raven is currently in Japan on holidays. Instead of heading to Suzuka to catch the F1 circus or the cherry blossoms, he has instead gone hunting for retro gaming goodies in Ikebukuro, another centre of otaku culture. The Doc has his priorities right.

This time, Brant paid a visit to Super Potato. Before you get too excited, this Super Potato store is much smaller than the main store in Akihabara, but it’s still adorned with nostlagia inducing retro gaming products. Brant tells us that the store is very small, but it has “shelves and shelves and shelves full of very rare stuff” – they were his words! Unfortunately Japan hasn’t been immune to costs rising, so the retro stuff that the Doc was checking out was expensive.

For now, we are living vicariously via Dr. Raven and can’t wait for him to send us more pics as his visits more retro gaming stores!

 

Iconic SEGA Akihabara Building 2 To Close Soon

By

It looks like we will never cross this one off our bucket list 🙁

SEGA’s Building 2 (formerly known as SEGA GiGo / Akihabara GiGo) is set to close on August 30th. Building No. 2 opened on the southern edge of Akihabara in October 2003, becoming a favourite for arcade video game enthusiasts and gaming nostalgia-seeking peeps.

It would seem that the current world health crisis has hit the Electronic Town quite hard, with a big downturn in visitor numbers. SEGA hasn’t as yet provided any formal reason for the impending closure, except for this post and the sign below, which reads (translation by SoraNews24):

image source: Arcade Otaku via Twitter

“Notice of Closure

Thank you for your continued patronage.

We are sorry to announce that this branch, Sega Akihabara Building 2, will be closing.

Our last day of operations will be Sunday, August 30.

The entire staff wishes to express, from the bottom of our hearts, our sincere gratitude at the loving support you have given our establishment for so many years.”

If you have visited SEGA’s Building No. 2, we would love to hear your stories (and see some pics), so please share them with us on Twitter or Facebook!

image source: That Damn Pixel / header image: Google