"When I came into this store, I was like a kid walking into a candy shop," Madrigal, 23, told AFP at Super Potato in the Akihabara district famous for its Japanese pop culture shops.
"This stuff is my passion. I love older consoles," he said. The PS Vita, a console released in 2011, that he bought "would usually cost me about $600 in the US."
Super Potato has three floors packed with Game Boy cartridges, Sega Dreamcast consoles wrapped in plastic and antiquated arcade machines where nostalgic customers can play "Street Fighter II" again.
Prices can be eye-watering. A handheld Nintendo Game & Watch electronic game from the 1980s -- featuring "Zelda" -- was priced at 250,800 yen ($1,750).
Around 70-80 percent of customers are foreign tourists, who have flocked to Japan in record numbers this year, store manager Komura, who only gave his surname, told AFP.
Part of the appeal, Madrigal said, is that many modern games are a bit "more of the same" compared to ones when he was growing up.
"There was a different kind of innovation," he said. "Companies weren't afraid to think outside the box. They were willing to take risks."
Video game historian Hiroyuki Maeda said that additional demand from collectors comes from the fact that some consoles were marketed differen
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