Someone Else’s Spring Cleaning

Sometimes it’s a matter of luck when you’re coasting through classifieds ads and happen to see one that’s brand new.  Nobody’s looked at it yet and your eyes are the first to take in the goods to be had.  This was exactly what happened to me last week and after getting through to the person selling almost immediately, we were soon on our way over to pick up a substantial pile of games and consoles.

There was nothing new in terms of consoles for us, but buying up extra consoles to trade or sell to fund other games is always something I’m thinking about.  We ended up with four different consoles, two handhelds, and a few games for each.  They took a long while to clean up since they were stored in open containers in a house with at least one cat and two dogs… the amount of dust, hair and mystery goo was exponentially more than I’m used to seeing, but a task I was up to handling nonetheless.

First, we picked up a Wii.  I’m not usually actively looking for these, but there were a few things I didn’t have in this lot like DJ Hero, as well as Super Smash Bros. Brawl.  DJ Hero and the two Guitar Hero games came with their respective accessories, and goodness are they bulky and hard to store!  Guitar Hero isn’t a game I dive into very often so I imagine we might end up giving the games and guitars away to friends or family since we already have several copies of both of these games on different systems.  I’m not sure if I’ll hang onto DJ Hero yet or not since I’m not sure I meet the coolness requirement to play that one.  There was also a second Wiimote, but batteries had been left inside and had leaked so much that some of the acid came out through the bottom connector port.  I haven’t tried to save that one, but the other was in great working condition.  Sadly, the Wii didn’t have any games downloaded onto it but I did luck out with a 2 GB SD card that had been forgotten about.  One interesting thing I didn’t even know existed was the Super Mario Galaxy commemorative coin that was in the mix.  Because I rarely buy games new, I was never privy to many of these perks.  The coin is really nice, and I’m happy to add it to my collection.

Next up was a GameCube.  I’ve really only run into black or silver ones when buying on the classifieds, but here we found a purple one!  The system came with a few memory cards, four controllers, and six games – one was stowed away in the Wii but couldn’t be read: Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland.  The only new-to-me game was WWE Wrestlemania X8, but the others will go into my trades bin.  Not all the games came with their manuals and Day of Reckoning was in particularly brutal condition, but hopefully I’ll be able to get something better in exchange for them down the line.  It was very nice to have found four controllers in excellent shape like these.  The only problem was that they were absolutely filthy with hair and sticky goo covering the rubberized buttons, and grime jammed up into every crevice.  I’ve bought some controllers in terrible shape in the past and despite the yuck-factor, these were at least working with all their parts!

There were also two kinds of handhelds: a Game Boy Color and a Game Boy Advance SP. You can probably see from the photo that the screen on the GBC is a bit scratched up, but it works well regardless.  If anyone might have an idea of how to fix up a screen like that, please let me know!  The GBA SP was really beat up on the outside, but the screen was fairly well preserved given that it’s hidden most of the time.  It also powered on without any trouble.  The two games we got were Pokemon Crystal and Pokemon Yellow, both of which fired up without issue after a good scrubbing.  Their save batteries were also still good.  Pokemon Yellow’s label ended up being a little faded after I had my way with it trying to remove a name and phone number scrawled across it in permanent marker.  These two games were more fodder for the trade bin since I own them both in other forms already.  

Also included in this purchase was a model 2 Sega Genesis and a pile of games.  Although many of them were sports games that I wouldn’t normally look twice at, lots of them were sports games we didn’t yet own.  I’ve been having a bit of a change of heart when it comes to sports games in general, especially ones from the 16-bit and 8-bit generations.  Some of them have a lot of heart and I’m looking forward to trying more of them out as I get more comfortable with them.  The one real stand-out game from this bunch was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist.  That’s a game my boyfriend’s been looking for for a long while, and the price was definitely right given that we only paid about $200 for everything here.  NBA Jam Tournament Edition was also new, as well as what is reportedly a terrible super hero game called Spiderman X-Men Arcade’s Revenge.

Last but not least, we ended up with a new SNES and some games.  Like everything else, the console was absolutely filthy and needed to be taken apart and cleaned up.  No official controller was in sight, but we did end up with a working SuperPad.  When I got my first SNES when I was 17 it came with the same controller but it never worked.  It’s not the most responsive but it’ll do just fine.  Games-wise, the three that were new to us were Super Smash T.V., Battletoads Double Dragon and Super Star Wars Return of the Jedi.  These are three games I’ve been casually looking for and am glad to finally cross off the list.  We also got a few beat up copies of popular trade-worthy games like Yoshi’s Island and Super Mario All-Stars, as well as Mortal Kombat 3 and Clue.  I did swap the board in this Yoshi’s Island cartridge for my personal copy with a better label since it fired up the first time.  The other two copies of Yoshi’s Island I have are extremely finicky, and I hope this new board will continue to start up reliably.

With our trades bin restocked and a hearty helping of new things for our own collection, I’d say that this purchase was a great success.  There are always new things around the corner waiting to be found, and Spring cleaning is still well underway for many people.  I’ve been out to a few yard sales here and there without much luck except stumbling upon some Strawberry Shortcake curtains… they were in the free bin and now live with me.

Happy Sunday, and thank you very much for reading.

-GG