Sega and Playstation walk into a bar…

After many prayers and fist-shakes, the gods of the classifieds ads have finally given me their blessing again.  Along with scouring the poorly-worded posts of people parting with their beloved games, I’ve also had some luck with finding a few decently priced games on eBay, making the items in this post exciting from a number of different ways.  I have mostly bumped into some games for the Sega Genesis and various Playstation consoles, so those are what I will focus on here.

I’m not entirely sure and perhaps someone else might help me to clarify, but it seems that prices of retro games seem to be on the decline.  This isn’t ubiquitous across the board, but in many cases, games I have wanted to buy seem to have come down in price by $20-$30 over the last few months.  I’m not sure why or how long it’ll last for, but I’m certainly not complaining!

Since I ended with one last time, I suppose it makes sense to start with one here: I found a boxed Game Genie for the Sega Genesis.  Unlike its SNES brother from the last post, the code book on this particular cheat device is enormous and covers a lot of really excellent games rather than an elite few.  I would almost be tempted to look for codes for games like The Lion King that I’m normally pretty decent at and see how much they mess with my usual style.  I had an NES Game Genie growing up, but with the Genesis, I was forced to get good at games by playing often and improving from my many, many mistakes.  This tool might be a blessing, or it might be a curse!

I also found a bunch of really great games for the Genesis.  The first is Decap Attack, a game I hadn’t heard much about until it was staring me straight in the face.  This one seems to have come to me just in time for Halloween, and I can’t stop thinking that the mummified monster on the box art looks strangely like Gossamer from Bugs Bunny with his eyes in the wrong spot.  If I end up doing a Halloween stream, this game might make the list!

In the same vein as many of my other purchases, there had to be some RPG-like games.  I ordered a copy of Sword of Vermilion from eBay, though it was missing its hint book.  The game had mixed reviews from what I could find online, but nonetheless, it’s a game I think I might take a liking to.  Alisia Dragoon is also hiding in the bottom right of the photo below as well, and that’s a game my better half had been wanting for a long while.  After I watched some gameplay online and read up on it, it certainly seemed like something I might be interested in playing as well, though it does seem like the difficulty spike toward the end of the game gets to be a little monotonous unless you start memorizing levels.  I think I can swing it though!

I bought a few more Genesis games from a local classifieds seller last week, and some of the games were a bit of a surprise to me.  I had no idea at all that a Bomberman game existed on the Genesis at all, so my interest was definitely piqued when I saw a weird 80s/90s version of Bomberman looking fierce on the game label, clearly sporting a top with the bones of his enemies glued on as a reminder of his lethal capabilities.  The game actually looks like standard Bomberman fare.  The second game below, Sub Terrania, looks like it’ll be a lot of fun as well.  I had the pleasure of receiving Solar Jetman as a gift this past summer (thanks again to Rob from I Played the Game!), and though I’m generally still horrible at it, Sub Terrania seems to pick up where that game left off.  It somehow seems more manageable, though I’m sure that’s just my hope shining through.  I’ll probably also be horrible at this one!

Another Genesis game I found lately was Fantasia.  Now, all I’ve managed to track down online are miserable reviews of this game.  I haven’t played it at all (not even to test it), nor do I recall anything at all about the Disney movie from my childhood except that there were angry brooms (I much prefer the angry brooms of Matoya from FFI, but I digress.)  I’m interested to see just how “bad” the game is for myself, because I generally feel like most people are way too hard on some games.  This may be one of them, or it might truly be a horrible atrocity.  Only time will tell.

I almost didn’t ask further about Tinhead because for some reason I had it confused with Tinstar for SNES.  I’m glad I gave my head a shake and looked into it a little more because this game definitely looks like it has some potential.  On the surface it certainly looks like any other generic Genesis platformer, but something drew me in with this one.  This game came complete with its manual and box, so it’ll be a nice addition to the rest of my boxed games.

The games I’ve been finding lately for PS1 are just freakin’ fantastic.  I can’t even begin to say how pleased I’ve been to grab some of these!

I’ll start with the game that was least exciting for me: Kartia.  Though it’s an Atlus game, it doesn’t seem to be particularly sought after or praised like many of the others from that particular company.  I hadn’t even heard of it at all until the person working at the thrift store happened to mention that the art on the cover looks very similar to that of early Japanese Final Fantasy cartridge art.  I’m still not sure what to make of it after doing a bit of reading and research about it.  Has anyone played this one before?

Another game ready to be endeavoured for the Halloween season is Koudelka.  I had heard about this game from a lovely Twitter friend (@esperdreams), and it took me forever to find a copy.  I once had the opportunity to buy this game for $60 and passed, and ended up paying almost double at a local shop that I try to support.  Though this price is much more in line with what you might find on hiked up eBay prices, unfortunately I can’t win them all.  I’d love to say I get all deals all the time, but this isn’t always the case.  Either way, the game has been hyped up to me for a long while now, and who wouldn’t like a game where you apparently fight a possessed wedding dress?

This second-last game I was elated to find for a good price online.  I’ve been a little obsessed with playing Harvest Moon 64 lately, and someone in my stream chat mentioned that Back to Nature was very similar to the gameplay/aesthetic of the 64 game.  Being me, lover of Harvest Moon cows and this particular iteration of the universe, I pounced upon a $30 copy from the internet and giggled with delight when I pulled it out of its shipping envelope.  I absolutely love love love everything about Harvest Moon 64, so anything that keeps me there a little longer will make me quite happy.  (For anyone interested, in HM64, I married Elli and we are having a baby soon!)

Last but not least, I finally, finally found a copy of Valkyrie Profile.  You may recall some moaning and groaning from me a few billion posts back about how I could never get Vanguard Bandits, Vandal hearts and Valkyrie Profile straight in my head, but now that I own all three, I won’t have that problem anymore.  There’s a small story to this: my friend that works at the thrift store saw a copy of the game at the store and decided not to tell me because she wanted it for herself.  Unfortunately since there’s a time constraint on employee purchases of merchandise, it came and went before she could purchase it.  She only told me it was there after it was already sold, and I was quite sad to see that it had come and gone without even knowing.  That was the first time that game had ever popped up in town, and oddly enough, a few days later the game popped up on the local classifieds site.  I was a little shocked and thought for sure that this person had to have been the one who bought it and was reselling, but the game was lumped in with Kartia and a bunch of Final Fantasy PS1 titles for $150, so it was an absolute screamin’ deal.  I didn’t even care if he was a reseller at that point because I was excited to finally have that game in my hands!

I’ve heard so many wonderful things about Valkyrie Profile.  I recently posted a tweet asking if I’d missed any particularly important PS1 RPGs, and this title was one that came up much of the time as a be all end all, along with others like Suikoden II and Final Fantasy VII (and literally every other RPG for the console.)  You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but the only PS1 games I’ve actually played are some of the Final Fantasy games, and a lot of Parappa the Rapper.  It’s quite sad considering how many beautiful, wonderful games I’ve finally found and would like to play.  Valkyrie Profile is definitely high up on my list.

And there it is… a bunch of really wonderful games that now live with a really wonderful me! It has been so nice to round out the PS1 RPG collection this year and continue to push deeper into Genesis stuff too.  I’ve also been to a few swaps last month and this month, so I have a few swap-related posts on the horizon.  Hopefully you will continue to be shocked and amazed at the things I pull out of my sleeves and hats!

Happy Monday, and happy almost-Halloween.  Are you folks playing any Halloween-themed/related games this holiday?  I will probably selfishly continue to play Harvest Moon 64 and brush my happy cows rather than plunging into anything scary.  Decap Attack does look pretty promising though!

Thanks for reading.

-GG