Story of the Gameboy Advance Perfect Catalogue

This book is called the Gameboy Advance Perfect Catalogue. It came out on 28 May 2019 for only 2,547 yen. It is a catalogue of all Japanese GBA games with pictures and descriptions of the games edited by Maeda Hiroyuki.

This is my collection of the Perfect Catalogue books. As a retrogamer, they are an amazing resource and are fun to read.

On my last trip I was looking for the GBA Perfect Catalogue but could not find it. No big deal, I thought. I can just order it when I get back. When I got back I realised the price had jumped over 10,000 yen. More than 4 times the original price. Every other Perfect Catalogue I could find but not the GBA one. Either the publisher G-Walk super underestimated the demand or there are a lot more GBA fans out there compared to the other consoles.

I managed the find the last copy on yesasia and I think it was around $100 including shipping by I could not pull the trigger. $100 for a book is crazy. I managed to find a pdf scan and decided to be happy with that. Not long after, someone bought the last copy from yesasia.

But I kept an eye on the book and the price shot up like crazy. It went over 20, 000 yen. More than 8 times the price. Absolute bonkers.

Then one day while browsing mercari Japan, I saw this person selling one for 2000 yen. I thought it must be a mistake but had to click. The seller wrote that there is a new version (増補新版) coming in June and they were doing it as a public service announcement and not to click on buy. I should have taken a screenshot of that one because it was going after a while, maybe a few weeks.

I googled for the new version of the guide and could not see any news but had no reason to doubt the person. Lo and behold a few months later and the new version appeared for preorder on Amazon Japan for 3,700 yen and I could not click buy fast enough. Really grateful to the person. I was never close to buying the original version but I appreciate a retrogamer looking after fellow gamers. I could see the scalpers trying to offload their stock on yahoo auctions and mercari as they realised what was coming. The funny thing is that while the original version has dropped price, it is still not that cheap at 7,200 yen.

Finally I have the book which I will devour slowly! So what is new? The new version has nearly double the pages at 384 and I think the biggest change was adding the overseas game. The moral of the story is supply and demand determines price and if you see something you might want in Japan, just buy it before the price goes up! Can't wait for the 3DS perfect catalogue!