Slower than Molasses Going Uphill in January…

That’s what my mom used to call me whenever I’d take too much time getting dressed in the morning, or when I was generally being slow at life.  This is the best way I can describe how game hunting has been for the past few months.  I’m quickly realizing that I have a lot of games that I want already, and what I don’t have yet isn’t likely to show up in the wild in the classifieds or at a thrift store.  People are also selling common games for much higher prices out my way so I haven’t been buying up game lots for a few games and trading away the rest anymore.  The deals just aren’t there.  It’s been quite the crawl, and unless I’ve gone off to a game store or ordered stuff off of eBay, I can’t say I’ve had much luck at all.

Despite being more miss than hit lately, I did track down a small pile of games at a thrift store a few weeks ago.  The first of the bunch were the first two games in the Uncharted series.  I don’t usually go out of my way to buy PS3 games, but these were in beautiful condition and came with their manuals as well.  For $3 each they were a pretty decent deal.  I don’t know much about the series but I’ve heard that it’s well-loved and I’m sure I’ll get around to trying them out sometime in the future.

I was also surprised to find a sealed PS1 game in the bunch.  I stumbled upon Martian Gothic: Unification and chuckled to myself reading through a few reviews of the game after getting home. People generally find this game to be abysmal, and it might stay sealed for a long while since I’m not in any rush to play an abysmal game. I have too many good games to play to start wading through the bad ones just to say I did!

In addition to these, I picked up A Boy and his Blob for Wii. I was patient with this game since it first appeared in the glass case at the thrift store for $16.  I waited a few weeks and since nobody picked it up, it eventually ended up on the shelf with a reduced price tag of $7.  I picked it up because I never had the chance to play the NES version, and I’ve heard this remake is a really big game with lots of levels and less obtuse puzzles than the original.  The graphics look really cute and I really need more reasons to bust out my Wii.  This disc was also in impeccable shape so it was hard to turn it down.  The manual looks like it has never even been touched before.  That’s how I like to find my games: pristine!

Though I’ve ultimately put aside the Sega Master System RPG quest for a little while to play other things, I did pick up an SMS game lately that would fit quite nicely with my other RPGs from that console.  Heroes of the Lance was recommended to me by a YouTube commenter, and though I’m sure he means well, I think he might just like to see people suffer since this game looks pretty hard.  I’m completely unfamiliar with Dungeons and Dragons in any of its many forms so I’ll be going in blind for a game like this. There are aspects that look promising and it’s been a habit of mine to like games that nobody else does, so naturally I rolled the dice when this one.   Anything with a dragon on its cover is more or less going to captivate me whether I want it to or not.  I should also mention that the manual is really, really long.  When I first saw it I was immediately intimidated, but only 12 or so of the pages are in English!  I’m a bit torn because I wish that there was more than 12 pages of information to set me on a path to success, but I’m glad it’s not an 80-pager.

In handheld news I picked up two games.  You might be wondering why on earth I’d ever consider buying the horrendous excuse of a game on the left in the photo below, but there’s a tiny story there.  I thought I owned it already.  I was convinced it was a terrible symptom of the pile of games I got from my friend Joe last year, but it turned out I didn’t have it after all.  I was reminded of the game while browsing Twitter one day: someone had made a thread describing bad games nobody should play, and N*Sync Get to the Show was on the list.  I decided to buy it because it gave me such a laugh, and though it’s probably one of the worst games I own, I’m desperately looking forward to playing it sometime.  Mario Golf Advance Tour is something I’ve been hoping to find for a while.  People have been going on a lot about Golf Story for Switch, and the idea of a golf RPG is pretty appealing to me.  What better place to start than here?  I also want to pick up the Mario Tennis games that have RPG elements as well as Mario Pinball Land.  I need all the Mario games on the GBA.

Last but not least, I did pick up 3 NES games: Bionic Commando, Air Fortress, and Castlequest.  The first two have been recommended to me by a relatively new friend of mine, The ReNesance.  I’m going to link his YouTube channel here because he is an extremely talented painter and skilled retro gamer that I’d highly encourage everyone to check out.  He paints video game landscapes in his series called the GameScape Artist, and I can’t get enough of watching creative people do creative things, so his stuff is right up my alley.  Go and take a peek at him!  You won’t be disappointed!  But yes, he has gone on and on about how excellent Air Fortress and Bionic Commando are (and has done some gameplay of the former here), so I was happy to find those both at a game store nearby and make them my own.  Castlequest came to me from the land of eBay and was relatively cheap as it should be… there certainly aren’t fan mobs clamouring to get their hands on the game, but that doesn’t tell me anything about its funness or goodness.  People also never talk much about Faxanadu, and that’s one of my favourite games of all time.

So a small yet happy post showcasing my scroungings from the last few months.  There are a few game swaps coming up this month that I’m going to try to make it out to.  I have high hopes that I’ll be able to cross some more things off my list and maybe do a bit of shopping for friends there too.  I’ve also been working on some other posts but am waiting for photos from my other half, so whenever he decides to get those over to me I’ll be able to tell you all about our arcade cabinet…

Hope you’re all getting ramped up for the long weekend.  Enjoy it, and thanks for reading!

-GG