I asked this question in /v/, but didn't get very many answers.

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Ads in the back of EGM and GamePro

>>3681669

Did they have anything at Funcoland, or was it all just local?

Local stores carried them. Also the back of magazines tend to have a lot of ads of said local stores with imports. Japanese friends. Then around 97 for me, lots of online stores were available.

>>3681672
Never saw imports at FuncoLand, but the last time I was there was like 1994 (Lansing, MI).

I am also 28, I remember seeing all those Japanese games at the back of magazines,even the N64 and DC before they came out here. I'd want fantasize about ordering all that shit.

>>3681679

Last time I was there was probably right before it got turned into Gamestop.

Go to ny
Go to every crappy seedy corner game store
Buy imports
?
Profit

Literally always tons of them in the city. Prices would always vary crazily from store to store.
Also they would trickle into mom+pop shops and funcolands from time to time

>>3681664
so, in my (old ?) time, video game shop just had some. in my side of the world, it really started with super NES/ Super famicom.

why ? simply because US market release only a fraction of what existed in japan, and usually censored it. and Europe would release even less game. and if it was released, it was quite a long time after (in Europe, megaman 1 was released after the 2, because of delay/crappy management). so imported game were often never released (like final fantasy VI jap / III US or chrono trigger).

Many video game magazine had ads and test for import games.

>>3681664
imagine, we never had final fantasy tactics before psp release, no Legend of mana....

US never got Secret of mana 2 (AKA seiken densetsu III). i have the import game for my super famicom.

>>3681680
Me too, same age even. There was one specific place I used to check that always advertised in gamefan. I never actually got an import until I got a Japanese copy of Pokemon Silver for Christmas. My step dad said he found it at some games store in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

>>3681871
I'm 28 and my first JP import was Pokemon Gold, also for Christmas (apparently in 1999). It was ordered online, though.

If you're 28, like I am, you should have been emulating games unreleased in your country since the end of your childhood/beginning of teenagehood.
Nesticle was out early, and many others quickly became available..

>>3681886
I think I vaguely remember playing some Zelda hack on an emulator back in the day, though I don't recall the emulator since I didn't bother too much with emulation. My first strong memory of emulating things was messing around with MAME back in the early 2000s.

I used to buy them for my boss. He'd fly me to Japan and I'd pick up what I could find.

>>3681810
This. Im 32 and grew up in new york. It was always a treat for me to go to the city because they had cool imports you could buy at shops and i remember bootleg anime being sold at street faairs. I had a friend at the time ( 96-99) who was birning ps1 imports and playing them. Funcoland didnt sell imports but im pretty sure they sold the pro action replays that allowed you to play them. This and the back of magazines.

I used a little shop in Reynoldsburg called Games on Main. It lasted a long time but it's finally gone now. I mainly rented and copied though. Playstation and VHS. I had Internet but it was dialup.

Even NEETs who never left their house could get imports through mail order places. I scanned a couple spreads out of some of my EGMs for /vr/ years back I'll find them.

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>>3682307

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>>3682317

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>>3682407

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>>3682409

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>>3682414

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>>3682415

>>3681664
I never imported myself, but I would see ads for it in Wizard magazines back when it was still relevant.

>>3682317
>>3682407
>>3682409
>>3682414
>>3682415
>>3682417
Used to buy Dragon Ball toys from these guys. Seeing these ads is such nostalgia, used to pour over them endlessly back in the day.

>>3681886

I remember my buddy showing me Chrono Trigger on an emulator in '97. I think it was ZSNES. I didn't have a PC at the time so I went out and bought the game used for 20 bucks after.

>>3681664
I got mine from import stores. for some reason, Phoenix Arizona had a huge anime/manga/asian pop culture scene. I got Saturn Castlevania SOTN and Vampire Savior from a local shop. nearly every comic shop had imported manga. there was even a little asian grocery store that rented raw and fansubbed, bootleg japanese anime and dramas. me and my friends watched all of Vision of Escaflowne, Gundam Wing, and Evangelion this way, years before they showed up on Cartoon Network

>>3682417
Christ, the prices! $95 for Star Ocean... and this looks to be around 1998!

>>3682531
It's 96. Why would people be importing FF7 in 98?

>>3682543
I was guessing, based on the fact that the N64 was out. I never actually looked up any dates.

>>3681664

I'm surprised nobody actually understands commerce enough to answer this question.

Short answer: same way as today with go to ebay/amazon/website replaced with go to retail store/rental store/mail order catalog.

Long answer:

There is a manufacturer that makes the console or game. They sell to a wholesaler. The wholesaler can either sell to overseas import wholesalers directly or sell to an wholesale exporter. If the wholesale exporter route is chosen the wholesale exporter takes care of the taxes and international shipping. If there is no middleman, the wholesaler also exports the goods to the wholesale importer. The wholesale importer receives the goods and sells to regional wholesalers. The regional wholesalers sell the goods to retail stores.

It was uncommon to import games from another region because of cost and few people speaking Japanese in America. It was not uncommon for a $50 game to be twice to three times as much when imported. The reason why it was more expensive was the middlemen (many wholesalers, distributors, importers, exporters) and not taking advantage of economies of scale.

Most people I knew who had Japanese systems and games had a parent that commuted frequently between countries and brought them over on the plane.

Most of the import games sold at retail where I lived were sold at rental stores and comic stores. This was very infrequent.

>>3682634
Gee thanks so much for educating us idiots with that long-winded barely-on-topic response that's clearly contradicted by evidence in the thread.
>>>/biz/

>>3682634
And the thread posted basically the same thing as your short answer, dumbass.

>>3683664
>>3683221
Stop being so salty.

>>3681664
I bought the Japanese version of powerstone 2 at a pawnshop once. I was so mad it didn't work on my Dreamcast.

>>3684542
You just needed to burn the Utopia boot disc.

By the time I started buying Japanese games in late 1995, there were already internet shops. (I started with NCSX.)
But I remember the ads in magazines like Diehard Gamefan.

>>3681664
a game store retailer/warehouse run out the back of a funeral home

>>3681664
Certain game stores would have them or if your town or city had an asian market you could sometimes find imported stuff there.
Around 98 was when I started seeing sites online you could buy and import games from.

>>3682317
>>3682407
>>3682409
>>3682414
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>>3682417
The writer likes to hype everything but he knows his stuff pretty well, not bad at all.

>>3681664
I never imported, but I remember magazines talking about it. Gamefan in particular was big into the import thing, both reviewing games and hosting ads from distributors that would sell them. I remember reading the ads and being like "Why the hell is Mario Kart $100?"

>>3688480
It IS an advertisement after all. Some things that caught my eye as understandable at the time but kind of funny in hindsight are
>Metal Gear Solid = Resident Evil killer
>Mischief Makers = Yuke Yuke Trouble Maker
>Terranigma = Creation of Heaven and Earth
>SoTN = Evil Castle Dracula X

I have Nip versions of both SNES Castlevania games. They're uncensored so much better. And cheaper.