The retro game spring seems to be flowing again!
Borrowed from RPGClassics.com’s Faxanadu WT
Maybe people are getting ready for a season change and are looking to part with some belongings before winter, or maybe it’s just coincidence. Either way, there are a ton of new ads appearing online and there have been a few games that have come out of the woodwork in shops over the last week or so. Despite the online ad surge, I’ve been having my best luck in the hock shops and thrift stores this week.
The first game I managed to pick up was an RPG for the Playstation called Eternal Eyes. It was a bit of an impulse buy because the hock shop was having a 50% off sale on many newer generation games (all generations of Playstation and Xbox games, really.) What got me interested was what my boyfriend showed me the back of the game’s case: there was a Chocobo-esque character among some JRPG-ish-looking folks. That sounded like a recipe for a good time! It also helped that the game was only $5, and I’ve gambled more away on sillier things. After getting into a brief argument with the cashier about how beat up a disc should be before it goes into the resurfacer (I won), the game was ours. When we got home, I read up a bit and apparently the game is a tactical RPG. I haven’t played much of those at all but I am looking forward to giving this one a whirl. The only other strategy RPG that I have is Final Fantasy Tactics, which I’ve heard is a cornerstone of the genre. Eternal Eyes is supposed to be mediocre, but maybe it’s a good place to start. It wouldn’t feel good going from great games in a genre to ones that aren’t so great, so hopefully this will be a good introduction to the game style.
Here is a picture of the case. It’s a bit beaten up, but the disc is essentially flawless after resurfacing. The cover art is far from stunning, but the swords and castles are promising. Also, red eyes! That’s a pretty indicative feature of malevolence. I always love a good antagonist in a game.
The second game I found hanging around a hock shop was Adventures of Lolo 2 for NES. The Lolo games are so fun and cute! The music is some of the most memorable I’ve heard in an NES game, and any kind of puzzle game is attractive to me. This copy of the game was priced pretty cheaply compared to what I had seen it going for online, so I pounced. I picked it up for $30. I wish I had gotten it for less, but you can’t win them all. After a thorough PCB contact cleaning, the game was up and running. The cartridge itself has some red marker on it that only mostly comes off and there’s some sticker residue that has merged with the plastic to form some horrible hybrid, but the label is nice! Here’s a photo!
The last game I picked up was for the Game Boy Advance, and it’s a Harvest Moon title. You might recall that I very recently picked up Friends of Mineral Town for the GBA, but I managed to find More Friends of Mineral Town for $15 at the thrift shop.
I love Harvest Moon games and will pick them up whenever I see them, but I honestly thought that this game was a sequel to Friends of Mineral Town. I was wrong. Apparently the gameplay is identical to that of Friends of Mineral Town, but one of the key differences is that you play as a girl and can woo guys in the game instead of girls. To pander to the female demographic, you can also change your outfit? I don’t know that that would’ve been a selling feature for me as a young girl looking for a game, but I digress. Looking at online stores, if the two games are essentially the exact same with a different “protagonist”, I’m surprised at the price difference between them. Friends of Mineral Town goes for about $10-$20 more than More Friends of Mineral Town! I also found out today that Friends of Mineral Town and More Friends of Mineral Town can talk to A Wonderful Life and Another Wonderful Life, respectively, on the GameCube. I don’t really know how or to what degree, but that was a neat little piece of trivia I picked up from the Interwebs.
I am pretty happy with all the nice discoveries for the week so far. I feel very diversified since all my purchases were from different systems, which isn’t usually the case. It has been a little while since I’ve found anything for Playstation!
As I’m finding more and more great games, it’s becoming apparent that I really need to sit down and spend some time playing them! With summer renovations drawing to a close, I have all the time I can possibly want to continue addressing this game backlog. I’m hoping to do more online streaming on Twitch sooner than later.
Thanks for reading, as always. I hope you’re all enjoying a four-day week if you were lucky enough to have a long weekend this past weekend!
-GG