With the first day of Spring come and gone, gaming-related things are slowly starting to wiggle out of the woodwork again! Much to my delight, lots of Nintendo games and accessories have found their way to me, and we’ve even made a new comrade in the process.
When we visited a flea market recently and found a bunch of Sega Genesis stuff, we also found a copy of Rampart for NES. I first discovered the real time strategy game while watching Pat Contri and Ian Ferguson’s Annual NES Marathon. I had felt a little mesmerized by Rampart and had felt like I needed more of it when they turned the game off and went onto the next one. It looked so fun to play with someone else or even against the computer! The premise is that you build up a base by placing walls and cannons for a few minutes, and then your bases battle it out. I have no idea what the end goal is, but it looked like something I might enjoy. The cartridge was beautiful, but a little more than I wanted to pay at $20. I sucked it up because we were getting such a good deal on other stuff that day.
In addition to Rampart, I also found a copy of Metroid on eBay for a screamin’ deal. I ordered from an ad that said that the copy of the cartridge I’d receive may not be the same condition as the game in the photo, and I was unpleasantly surprised to find that they sent me the later game release with the yellow label rather than the traditional grey one. That’s what I get for trusting humans on the internet to read my mind about exactly what I want! Regardless, the cartridge was still in great shape, and there were no substantial changes to the game itself between release versions. Buying Metroid was singlehandedly driven by my experience reading about LightingEllen‘s quest to finish the game late last year, and her thoughts about it in a post here. I’m excited to be able to turn into a little ball and take the plunge into a very well-loved series I have yet to experience at all.
A local shop was also selling a few odds and ends, and one of them was a four player adapter for Game Boy. This one will be hard to try out considering that my childhood Game Boy’s screen is detached… the glue completely dried up. Thankfully my boyfriend’s is still intact, but that leaves us a second player short. We just need to find another Game Boy friend! There were actually a lot of Game Boy games released that are compatible with the four player adapter, but it doesn’t appear that we own many of them. Damn my love or solitary gaming experiences. Maybe some day!
The store was also selling an e-Card Reader, but I didn’t pick it up. I’m not really sure how it works or where to get cards for it. Thoughts?
Back to Game Boy games! I found a copy of Sword of Hope for a reasonably decent price of $18 on eBay, and it came to me all the way from Germany. There was a copy of the game here in town for $20, and when I had asked the hock shop owner if he’d come down to $15 (the game had literally been there for years and even had a faded price tag on it), he said no! I was shocked! I wish them the best of luck selling that game for $20, or maybe for even more now since he said that the price had gone up on the game when checking “his sources”. I’m pretty sure he mistook the game for the second installment, Sword of Hope 2, which is considerably more expensive for reasons unbeknownst to me. Oh well. At least I have a copy now, and for less than $20 shipped. The game plays similarly to Shadowgate or Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom (another game I want to play!) where you have a first person perspective and move through various locations. Sword of Hope has RPG elements like weapons and armour, as well as spells from what I can tell. I look forward to its vagueness! You’ve gotta love the cartridge art: dragon eyeball and a sword. It can’t get more epic quest-like than that.
I mentioned at the beginning of this post that we might have made a friend recently, but I suppose friend is a loose term. After answering a classifieds ad, we met another collector in town: an 18-year-old guy with at least two walls and several cupboards full of games! Initially we had responded to his ad for some GameCube games including Kirby’s AirRide, and Metroid Prime. I’m not usually into first person shooters, but after reading many, many positive thoughts about Metroid Prime, I decided to dive in. Both games came complete with their manuals, and the discs were in relatively good shape. While testing out the Kirby game, I couldn’t help but let a few squees escape me as the adorable little Kirby drove his adorable little star with his adorable little Kirby-like compadres. So cute! I think it’s hilarious how you only have to push buttons to brake and steer, and that otherwise your character is on autopilot. Despite the seeming simplicity of the game mechanics, I am just awful. Practice, practice, practice!
The collector we met said he had a bunch of stuff available that he hadn’t listed yet and sent me some photos to look through. We first offered him a trade that he refused, so we ended up scaling back our list and only buying up a few more things from him. We got Mega Man X for SNES, as well as Cobra Triangle and Friday the 13th for NES (I thought of you, Cheap Boss Attack!). Friday the 13th and Mega Man X’s labels were only in okay condition with a bit of peeling, but it’s nothing that a little glue won’t fix right up. Everything is working great. My boyfriend is very excited for some boating shenanigans with Cobra Triangle, which does honestly look like a lot of fun. Everything that runs on that 45 degree/faux 3D angling reminds me of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure, and I’m quite fine with that.
I might have mentioned it before, but Mega Man X was one of the only games I have ever sold in my life. In my 20s, I had bought it to play with a then-friend of mine, and we eventually parted ways in the worst way possible. Because the game continually reminded me of the memories from that friendship and because I had no intention of playing it again at the time, I had sold it to someone for $10 and had even delivered it across town to be rid of it. Having had some time to grow from that point in my life, I’m quite happy to own a copy of it now and will hopefully make some new memories with it. I don’t know that I’ll be gunning to get my hands on X2 an X3 any time soon considering their price tags, but if the price is right, maybe! Either way, I won’t feel so guilty about leaving it behind anymore.
Because our collector friend wouldn’t take our trade, we missed out on a few CIB games that I was hoping to play sometime for the Sega Genesis. These included Dynamite Headdy, Rocket Knight Adventures, Dungeons and Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun, as well as The Jungle Book. On the bright side, we are going to a game swap this coming weekend so I might find some of those games there. What I’m really hoping for is to trade someone some games for Phantasy Star IV or Shining Force II. I’d also trade for Skies of Arcadia as well. Here’s hoping!
I hope you’re all enjoying this nice, sunny Thursday. Thanks for reading!
-GG