"Foreign"/Import games in wild

[jhd]

Have many people encountered "foreign" or import games in wild at flea markets, thrift shops, etc? I am not counting game shops that specifically import titles for resale.

 

By "foreign" I am referring specifically to the situation in North America where Canadian-only titles (e.g. Zellers games, Obelix, bilingual or French-language labels) turn up in the US, and American releases (e.g. Sears VCS titles) that appear for sale in Canada.

 

(Similar things may happen across Europe, but I am utterly unfamilar with that market).

 

Personally, I have once seen a Sears-brand VCS at a thrift shop here in Canada, and another time I found a pirate Famicom cart at another thrift shop.

 

Not gaming-related, but I once also found a pile of VCD(?) movies from Asia at a thrift shop.

Edited March 14, 2012 by jhd

[+save2600]

Nope. Hardly ever (if ever) have seen any of those types of games in the wild and it makes perfectly good sense as to why. Only a few reasons I can think of why they'd even be over here. Talking about classic gaming from back in the day that is:

 

1) someone from another country brought their goods with them to the States when they moved. Or sent them over to family and friends living here.

 

2) possible that some ethnic-centric stores carried things from other countries because it was convenient or cheap for them to do so and they knew they had or might have had a market for them.

 

...and that's about it. We only had catalogs from major retailers back then (vs. the internet today) and I do not remember *any* of them offering alternative games such as the Coopers, Zellers, Taiwanese, Brazilian, etc. Even in the backs of magazines, most all of the mail order places sold things that were meant to be for the U.S. only. Wasn't until the late 80's, early 90's when I started seeing Japanese importers becoming more popular. And then by the mid 90's, the poop hit the fan and we all quickly learned that there were all these other goofy knock offs, and rip-offs out there. Zellers comes to mind. At first, I was so excited that there may have been completely new to me Atari games out there, but nope. Outside of the extremely few that were not rip offs, that existed for the Asian, European and South American markets that is.

[jhd]

What about cross border shopping? People go on holidays, buy games, and later they (or their families) donate them to charity.

 

My family makes at least three or four trips across the border every year, primarily for the purposes of shopping in US stores; this is very common among the people whom I know. I have purchased games in the US ranging from the 2600 through the PlayStation 2, some of which were not available at retail in Canada.

[NinjaWarrior]

I found a PAL SMS 2 at the Thrift Center (now Eco Thrift) many moons ago

[SEgamer]

The only one I've found was a PAL version of Bobby is Going Home for the 2600. I also found a Timex ZX81 which I think is the European version of the Timex Sinclair 1000 computer.

Edited March 15, 2012 by SEgamer

[Seob]

Here in the Netherlands, it's a mixed bag. Since Europe is sliced into many individual countries, each with they're own languages, you'll see a wide variety of Foreign games, especial living near the German and Belgium border. I see a lot of localized nes, snes games in game shops near the border, and it's not to uncommon to see ntsc games here in the neighborhood. Living near a army base where Us soldiers live, it's not rare to see even tv's or other electronics that don't use 230v.

[SoulBlazer]

That has to have it's pluses, being near a US Base. Lots of things imported/bought by/traded for by the soliders, especily in recent years. I know some German collectors who got their start during that as kids in the 80's, playing games with army brats and the like.

 

I've only seen a rare item here and there that had been imported -- once in a yard sale, another in a thrift shop. Does seem a bit unusuall here.

[adoblivione]

I thought I'd come across a PAL Obelix at a thrift store yesterday, which would be the first import game I'd found in the wild. Turns out it was NTSC, so still no wild import games for me.

 

Of course, I'm certainly not complaining about finding an NTSC Obelix!

[goldenegg]

I'm from Canada and I can tell you it's not difficult to find these games in the wild at all. Just the other day I was taking a stroll along a nice ravine and saw a family Zellers games swimming in the water. A little further down, I saw a bunch of French-Canadian games acting all snooty to a group of US games, who must have recently flown in due to the warmer weather.

 

[hwj_chim]

I found a copy of Sin and Punishment for the N64 in a Pawn shop CIB. I was very surprised because I live in a small town in AZ and you don't see many retro games let alone an import.

[MagitekAngel]

I've seen a few PAL Super NES games in thrift shops around here before.

I've also seen a couple of Japanese games on PSP and DS show up in game stores.

More systematically, I asked a few questions about Master System games I had found and some AA'ers informed me that a lot of European Master System stock was sold in Canada. Hence finding clamshells and instruction booklets in six languages.