Ready Up Auction for Japan

It’s been a month since the earthquake and tsunami devastated the north east of Japan and crippled most of the country, with the death toll climbing to 13000 the difficult and costly rescue operation struggles on. It will certainly be a long time before the country makes any return to normalcy, with experts estimating electricity shortages for at least 3 years, following massive problems with the Fukushima power plants (including severe radiation leakages), meaning for the first time in years Tokyo’s iconic neon cityscape is dull. In short the scale of the rebuilding effort is almost on par with the post war reconstruction, and no less daunting.

The games industry worldwide has responded with incredible generosity to the crisis, not least in Japan where the industry was already suffering a severe economic decline (and no doubt these events will drastically further affect the industry). The site www.playforjapan.org was set up to facilitate the games industry to raise money by auctioning iconic, one-of-a-kind items, and so far has raised over $90,000, and this approach has been spreading with many similar auctions popping up. But it’s not only the games industry, but gamers who have been giving, as demonstrated by PSN’s prominent campaign. As the spiritual home of videogames Japan is a country close to the heart of most gamers, and we all want to help as best we can.

This is certainly the case here at Ready Up, so we’ve set up our own ebay auction with any money raised going directly to the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund run by Global Giving. The first items have now been sold, so many thanks to those who placed their bids. The Japanese editions of Silent Hill II on Xbox and Snatcher on Sega Saturn, both signed by Akira Yamaoka, the iconic composer who is largely responsible for Silent Hill’s brooding atmosphere, sold for an amazing £70 and £57 respectively. Additionally there is a custom Xbox 360 Hori Real Arcade Pro EX-SE arcade stick with unique Okami vinyl design sold for a whopping £150! Another hit was the soundtrack for Valkyrie Profile: silmeria, which sold for £20.

UPDATE: Now up for bids is an incredibly exclusive set of comic books based on the iconic Revolution point and click adventures Beneath a Steel Sky, Broken Sword, and Broken Sword 2, all signed especially for us by designers Dave Gibbons and Charles Cecil. That’s just the way we roll.

UPDATE: There’s also a very tasty retro collection of classic Mega Drive games including Jungle/Desert Strike, Cool Spot, Strret Fighter 2 and the excellent Toejam and Earl 2: Panic on Funkotron (one of the best platformers ever made). It all comes with a Mega Drive system with 2 controllers so you can play them.

More Items are being donated by Ready Up staff and the wider community as I write.

Please visit the auction here and bid generously. If you have something that you can do without and that you think will raise a bit of cash for this excellent cause then please get in touch.