Videogames in Kyoto

Well, most people seeing this knows about me, Japan and videogames. If anyone happens to get to the lovely Kyoto however, I thought I’d share som knowledge about where all the awesome game stores are!


First of all, I’d say there are three different kinds of stores to buy games in. You have (a) the electronic departments, (b) used book-shops and (c) specialist game stores. (the links are for google maps!)

Also, each of these have varying degrees of size and notability. When focused on games, the bigger ones tend to have higher prices, whereas this is the exact opposite when it comes to sell-all-the-things stores.

For example (b), the quite famous Book-Off (takes VISA, which is unusual) sells every kind of media like books, movies and games. They also tend to have fixed prices on the latter, so somewhat rare titles can be found for really good prices, while less popular once tend to be pretty expensive. Unfortunately, they don’t test everything thoroughly, but if you can find Metroid Zero Mission for 500 yen it’s probably worth it!
Another less notable store of this kind is Pit which sells and rents everything, but usually charges more for rare titles. On the other hand, like most smaller stores, they have 20% sales like twice a month, which means that somewhat new and popular titles such as Persona 3 becomes 1600 yen instead of 2000. Which is pretty awesome, really.
There’s also this store which occasionally has some really good deals, especially on newer titles. Also, the used books (ok, comics) selection is great and you can buy packs if you’re into that stuff. Monster Hunter Tri sells for 1800 yen new, while Final Fantasy XII while charge for 1000 yen. I think this store has the best Wii selection I’ve found yet, but I suppose that’s because I haven’t seen Zack and Wiki anywhere else (750 yen!).

Specialist game stores (c) usually sell the rare stuff, but they charge a lot for it because they know what they’re worth.. Usually good for finding retro titles though, especially 2D-era.
Right where I live there’s an A-Too, one of the bigger used game shops around here. It’s pretty small, and they often have this crazy 2 games under 1000 yen => 50% off, and/or 2 games over 1000 yen => 1000 yen off. If you want to hit this sale, I think it’s usually during the school vacations. They sell some movies and anime as well (and loads of porn, I think, I haven’t really dared walking through those 18+ curtains (this is, after all, Japan)).
There’s another one right here, which doesn’t feature as many sales, but sometimes offer better prices and some pretty hard-to-find retro games. They tend to have all the games the above doesn’t have in stock.

Finally, there are the big-ass electronic departments (a) like Bic Camera and Yodobashi. They sell every single new electronic thing you can imagine, but also at rather high prices (as they are new wares). Bic has a great website where you can check what they charge as well as current sales. If you’re staying here for a while, a point card is absolutely recommended, as you can usually get as much as 10% points (which essentially works as a 10% gift card) that you may use in all branch stores from the next day. Especially great if you decide to buy something expensive, like a camera or somesuch. It’s usually only worth shopping games here if you’re looking for something very recent, though.
There are also a couple of smaller variants, like this one (address approximate), where you can go to the fourth floor and find some really new, great games for just 2000 yen if you’re lucky. Also, they have some free swag if you feel like it. And lastly, to summarize this great voyage of video game stores in Kyoto, you have Midori which offers a nice selection of PS2 and current-gen games for, at times, very reasonable prices. Ratchet and Clank put me back a ridiculous 300 yen, while Mad World costs about 1600 yen. All these departments take VISA, unfortunately not that common around here.


In case you go to Kyoto and hope to find some games, I really hope this helps :D good luck, have fun!