Gimmick / Mr. Gimmick
Feb 24, 2019 16:21:43 GMT -5
Post by protoman85 on Feb 24, 2019 16:21:43 GMT -5
Gimmick, that holy grail of NES/Famicom collecting. Although there's always another game that is more rare or expensive, Gimmick is still high up on anyones list of games they want to get.
I became aware of it a long time ago but the price was beyond me by a lot, and besides I actually do think when it comes to Sunsoft games that Batman and Gremlins 2 are more enjoyable games to play anyway, and Journey to Silius has the best Sunsoft music, so I could do without Gimmick. With some of the high-tier games like Moon Crystal, Little Samson, Power Blade 2 and Metal Storm, I got pirate cartridges instead so that I could at least play the games, but with Gimmick even that wasn't so easy as the "Pipe V" pirate isn't easy to come by, and other reproductions(non-NES ones, because I collect Famicom and not NES) aren't easy to find either.
Flash forward to last year, when I lived in Japan for a year studying japanese, having saved up money for almost two years in preparation(it was supposed to be one year but I got testicular cancer 3 days before I was set to go the first time then treatments ended up delaying the whole thing by a year) but when I did go I had about $12000, and during my spring time off I went to Sapporo on vacation, and like usual whenever I went to a new city or town, I look for game stores, Book Off or Hard Off stores. I went to Mandarake there, where they had Gimmick for 19000 Yen. The common price in Japan cartridge only was/is 30-35000. I don't spend this much money on games, the most I spent on a single game before this was 14000 for Adventure Island IV and before that Yokai Buster Ruka no Daibouken for $80 on Ebay. But I wasn't going to go back to Sapporo again any time soon, and even though 19K yen was a lot, it was still 10-15k less than the usual price. The price was lowered because of "big damage" but there were none really. Mandarake is very strict with their grading of games and in this case that worked out for me.
So I bought the game, and even though I can't beat the first stage(stuck at the mini-boss) I'm quite happy. But, there's more.
I was interested in the games main creator, Tomomi Sakai, who worked for Sunsoft only a few years before dropping out and pretty much dropping out of gaming altogether, making him a bit of a mystery. However I googled him, found his private blog, saw that he had replied to a couple other foreigners who made posts to him regarding Gimmick, so I took to his contact page and sent him a message, saying that as I lived in Kyoto and had a friend in Nagoya(where he lives) that I visit occasionally, and I asked if next time I came to Nagoya if I could meet him and he could sign my game. And surprisingly, he agreed! I ended up meeting him in a coffee shop there and talked to him for about 3 hours about the game and some other stuff, like what he does now(he runs an online store that deals in telescopes... random) and more. He didn't want to have video or a photo taken of him, so a video interview wasn't possible, but I took notes from our talk at least, which I plan to use in the future when my FamiFun youtube series gets to #100.
Anyway, I just wanted to express how I'm just a gamer among many, of modest means, and I'm happy and grateful that sometimes dreams do come true.
The image option in the post creator didn't work so:
imgur.com/5aeUEg7
I became aware of it a long time ago but the price was beyond me by a lot, and besides I actually do think when it comes to Sunsoft games that Batman and Gremlins 2 are more enjoyable games to play anyway, and Journey to Silius has the best Sunsoft music, so I could do without Gimmick. With some of the high-tier games like Moon Crystal, Little Samson, Power Blade 2 and Metal Storm, I got pirate cartridges instead so that I could at least play the games, but with Gimmick even that wasn't so easy as the "Pipe V" pirate isn't easy to come by, and other reproductions(non-NES ones, because I collect Famicom and not NES) aren't easy to find either.
Flash forward to last year, when I lived in Japan for a year studying japanese, having saved up money for almost two years in preparation(it was supposed to be one year but I got testicular cancer 3 days before I was set to go the first time then treatments ended up delaying the whole thing by a year) but when I did go I had about $12000, and during my spring time off I went to Sapporo on vacation, and like usual whenever I went to a new city or town, I look for game stores, Book Off or Hard Off stores. I went to Mandarake there, where they had Gimmick for 19000 Yen. The common price in Japan cartridge only was/is 30-35000. I don't spend this much money on games, the most I spent on a single game before this was 14000 for Adventure Island IV and before that Yokai Buster Ruka no Daibouken for $80 on Ebay. But I wasn't going to go back to Sapporo again any time soon, and even though 19K yen was a lot, it was still 10-15k less than the usual price. The price was lowered because of "big damage" but there were none really. Mandarake is very strict with their grading of games and in this case that worked out for me.
So I bought the game, and even though I can't beat the first stage(stuck at the mini-boss) I'm quite happy. But, there's more.
I was interested in the games main creator, Tomomi Sakai, who worked for Sunsoft only a few years before dropping out and pretty much dropping out of gaming altogether, making him a bit of a mystery. However I googled him, found his private blog, saw that he had replied to a couple other foreigners who made posts to him regarding Gimmick, so I took to his contact page and sent him a message, saying that as I lived in Kyoto and had a friend in Nagoya(where he lives) that I visit occasionally, and I asked if next time I came to Nagoya if I could meet him and he could sign my game. And surprisingly, he agreed! I ended up meeting him in a coffee shop there and talked to him for about 3 hours about the game and some other stuff, like what he does now(he runs an online store that deals in telescopes... random) and more. He didn't want to have video or a photo taken of him, so a video interview wasn't possible, but I took notes from our talk at least, which I plan to use in the future when my FamiFun youtube series gets to #100.
Anyway, I just wanted to express how I'm just a gamer among many, of modest means, and I'm happy and grateful that sometimes dreams do come true.
The image option in the post creator didn't work so:
imgur.com/5aeUEg7
He was in the video game music documentary Diggin' in the carts, seemed like a pretty chill dude. 
