This is the ninth post in a series called “Hungry Goriya Used Acquire” that serves to highlight the contents of a large game collection I procured from an old high school friend of mine, Joe. Read here for the backstory.
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ll know that I got a screamin’ deal on some PSPs within the past year but didn’t have many games to play. I will admit that the number of games I own for the handheld has not increased substantially with the acquisition of my friend Joe’s video game collection, but there were certainly a few games worth sauntering through in the bunch.
One thing I was happy to see were two more PSPs. You might think I’m a greedy, terrible person for now owning four of the very same thing, but in attempting some gameplay with the silver one we got, it’s a little finicky and constantly asks me if I want to quit playing which makes it difficult to enjoy using it. These two PSPs were in excellent shape and each came with a memory card, something lacking in my previous PSP purchases. One came in its box as well, so that was also a nice addition to the numerous boxed consoles/accessories we got in this lot of stuff. I even got a sealed copy of Spiderman 2 on UMD to watch. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not since I don’t really follow a lot of superhero movie politics, but time will tell.
For games, there were a few really nice additions for the collection here, and some sealed doubles I might be able to use for trades at a swap coming up in the next few weeks. As usual, the games came complete with their manuals and sometimes other inserts and were all in pristine condition. The first three here are completely unrelated, but didn’t fit into my other weird “categories” for photos I imagined up. Of the three, I think I’d like to try out the God of War game the most given that the internet tells me it’s good. I think streaming from a PSP is possible as well, so I’m definitely looking into ways to get that set up.
The second bunch of games here are either puzzle or shooter games. Space Invaders Extreme as a title made me laugh out loud when I saw it. I can just picture advertisements for the game with beefy, tattooed, bandana-wearing guys yelling, “Extreme!” while flexing in front of an alien wave, but in all honesty, I’m sure the “extreme” part of the game is some of the extras that they’ve added onto the typical gameplay – bosses, power-ups, etc. Loco Roco is a game I’ve always been interested to try out, so that’s one I’m hoping to play sooner than later. It’s on the same level of interest for me as Katamari Damacy.
The last set of games here are, as always, RPGs! Even more excitingly is that two of them are of the Final Fantasy variety since there were plenty of re-releases of many classic games for this format. I think that with this new addition for the PSP, I now have three iterations of the original Final Fantasy game with the others being for the NES and PS1. Though there are many people out there that dislike FFII, I actually don’t. It’s a different spin on the usual, and I vowed long ago to actually finish the game someday. I’ve started it twice, and for various reasons had to put it down.
From what I understand, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth is a port of the original PS1 version of the game. I’ve mentioned here before how I always get the PS1 RPGs that start with the letter V confused with one another (Vandal Hearts, Valkyrie Profile, Vagrant Story, etc.), but after double-checking again with the internet and what I already own, Valkyrie Profile is one of the more elusive of the bunch because of its limited release. Though this PSP version is obviously not the original, there are apparently very few differences between the two releases. I’m excited to play it, though I hear the premise is really sombre. Doom and gloom isn’t so bad, right?
I deliberately put off talking about Crisis Core above because I wanted to share a special edition of the game I received here instead. It comes with a cardboard sleeve, the game with all its usual goodies as well as an art book. The art book has barely even been opened – the spine made a cracking noise when I took a peek inside. I’ve heard Crisis Core is incredibly moving and an excellent game all around, so it’s definitely going onto my list of things to eventually play.
That’s it for PSP stuff. As I mentioned above, there are definitely a few really great things here that I’m excited to try out, and I’m even more excited to see if I can stream and record some gameplay for fun. We recently added an upscaler to our stream/recording setup, so video quality can definitely be improved upon if the PSP doesn’t output in a lovely signal. I haven’t looked into things too much yet, but I’m hoping to in the coming weeks.
In other news, I am primed to go to a few swaps over the next few weekends. Hopefully I’ll have some other things to write about outside the realm of these big collection buy posts, though I’m happy many of you are enjoying them. Thrift stores and classifieds ads have been so fruitless lately. I’ve only found one measly game at a yard sale and a few Playstation games, but that’s about it. I’ll probably put a post together about those shortly to change it up here.
Thanks for reading!
-GG