You might be thinking, sure Level Up is alright and all, but what makes them any different from those other game stores?  Well, I'm glad you asked.

 Do those other game stores have Ceramic White Playstation 3's?  Or how about Ice Blue Nintendo DS Lites?  OH!  And I'm willing to bet that none of them stock Dualshock 3's (they're back, for now, we'll order more of course).   That's right, we're getting into imports.  For now we're sticking to the region free systems such as the DS, PSP, and PS3.  You don't need anything special to play Japanese games on those systems, and for some of them you don't even need to understand Japanese (though as a rule the more complicated the game, the more difficult it will be to understand). 

Right now, the two imports that really stand out are Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.  GT5, as a racing game will be reasonably easy to navigate, where as Crisis Core is going to have a steep learning curve on it (unless you read Japanese).  But speaking as somebody that's trudged through two different Japanese RPGs (Pokemon Gold and Mother 3) you can make it pretty far with just a basic understanding of how game menus work.

Not too long ago I asked everybody to write something for the site with the promise that I would post it here and try to keep the site regularly updated with interesting content.  Now, as you can tell, that hasn't really panned out, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't still send me something.  For instance my friend Jeff Payne sent me the following story today and I'm going to post it.  It's a story that just about anybody that grew up in the 80's will relate to.  So if you have stories like this or anything even remotely related to the store, send it along!  But for now, enjoy Jeff's story after the jump.