I'm going next week and I'm in need of store advice. In particular, I'm looking for old, out-of-print classics rather than current releases. I've found lots of retro _game_ store pointers but nothing for soundtracks.

Thanks!

(I tried a quick search first and found nothing so apologies if this has been covered.)

What area will you be in?  It really depends on the area.

- Justin Pfeiffer

If you visit desolate or country used CD stores with big-ass luck, you could encounter them at cheap prices. Book-off stores or video game shops sometimes have them, but it's often expensive.

Anyways, I recommend you don't expect too much.

If you're in Akihabara, check out the Liberty stores.  They have a pretty good selection of used CDs, and plenty of anime/VGM CDs.  Strangely, the prices varied quite a bit for the same item in the same condition among the different outlets, and no one store had the cheapest price on all the stuff that I wanted, so keep notes if you're comparison shopping.

Also in Akihabara, the Super Potato store had a pretty wide vgm selection, including cassettes and vinyls, but oldies were priced accordingly (aka higher).

xanadujin, I'll be going to Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo so pretty much everything is fair game.

The well-known places in Akihabara and Nipponbashi like Liberty and Super Potato do have great selections, but their prices are fairly high because they keep up on the value and rarity.  Those places are great for physically perusing VGM.  It's the oddball shops that tend to have the best deals, but unfortunately many places like that aren't carrying VGM anymore.  Places mentioned like Book Off and Hard Off (second-hand shops) would be great but I've never seen a dedicated VGM section at any of them.  Most just have a small anime music section with mabye a few FF albums thrown in so don't bother with them.

When you get to Akihabara, one of the first places you'll run into is Gamerz, and they have a fantastic selection of new VGM up on the 3rd or 4th floor.  Animate is another good place to get new VGM, which are all over Japan.  The Liberty stores are in Akihabara.

Actually, keep an eye out for a store called Medio.  It's a game shop but some of them carry VGM.  I got some of my best deals at Medio in Okayama.

I've never run into any VGM stores in Kyoto, so don't expect too much there.  As for Osaka, Nipponbashi (near Nanba) is the best place to do VGM-searching.  They have a Super Potato and there are some other decent stores but their names escape me.  I'll try to update you with the names if I find them out.

- Justin Pfeiffer

Thanks for the tips, guys. I was expecting good selections to be hard to find but just about every retro store in Akihabara had a huge vgm section.

Liberty had a bunch of old stuff and the prices didn't seem too bad. I was delighted to find the Segata Sanshiro theme song mini-CD single. I didn't know such a thing existed

Super Potato did seem overpriced for older stuff. I did score Shenmue Orchestral for cheap.

Friends was the big surprise. I had only seen them mentioned once on someone's blog and it's hard to find their store. But once you find it, they have a great collection of boxed retro games and game music. Friends was the only I found with Actraiser Symphonic (bought it for cheaper than what most places wanted for the OSV) and Zelda Hyrule Symphony (ouch... $150, passed).

Mandarake in Nakano wasn't anything special.

In Osaka, Super Potato only had about ten CDs as far as I could tell. Retro TV Game Revival had a nice section and I picked up Orchestral Game Music Concert #2.