When I was 17… I got my very first SNES…

Just under half my lifetime ago in 2002 at my very first part-time job, I had been talking to a coworker about video games (as usual.)  He was complaining about his old SNES taking up too much room in his bedroom, so I asked him if he would be willing to sell it to me.  He said he would and brought it to work the next shift we were scheduled to work together.  I remember being so excited looking through the bag of stuff.  He had the console (which hadn’t yellowed at all), one official and one unofficial controller, as well as five games.  He had Super Mario World, Super Mario All-Stars and some sports games that I can’t recall now.  When I had asked what he wanted me to pay for it, he said $5.  I forked over my five-er and for the very first time could call myself a Super Nintendo owner!  I think about this often and wonder if he ever regrets selling it all to me, at least for so little money considering price inflation on retro games these days.

Before owning my own copies of the games, I remember playing Super Mario All-Stars and Super Mario World at friends’ houses and loving both games dearly.  With respect to All-Stars, despite the charm of the updated graphics and music, I am still more fond of the NES versions of Super Mario Bros. 1-3 because I grew up with them.  The Lost Levels on that cartridge are a nightmare, and I can’t complain enough about how hard some of the levels are (especially 8-3… damn those Hammer Bros.)  I’ve been debating doing a playthrough of that game soon, but I need to practice first I think!  Super Mario World was not a game I ever managed to finish in its entirety until a few years ago, but I loved it too.  I remember being baffled by the idea of having multiple ways to complete a stage.  That idea truly revolutionized the way I played platformers from there on out. I had always thought of platformers as linear, but the idea of exploring for hidden blocks and just-out-of-sight platforms made the experience so much more involved.  I loved it.

This blast from the past brings me to a few days ago: at the thrift store I chanced upon a compilation cartridge released in 1994 called Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World.  Even though I still have the two individual cartridges, I’ve always wanted to get my hands on the compilation because there are some slight differences in character designs (mainly Luigi) as well as some other small touches like differences in the title screen art.  The compilation cartridge normally goes for about $60, but the thrift store had it for $30.  I conveniently had a 15% off card which saved me the taxes on the purchase.  Here are some photos of the compilation cartridge with my two original copies of the individual games:

I am always fond of collecting games that have to do with Nintendo’s main game franchises.  For the right price, I’d even pick up the horrible Mario-themed educational games.  I saw those recently in their boxes at a swap for $40-$70 each, so I passed.  Next time, Gadget.

I hope you’re all enjoying this cooler weather.  Thanks for reading, as usual!

-GG

The Swap Timing Experimentation

My boyfriend was feeling pretty crummy on Sunday.  We were supposed to wake up early and travel out of town to a game exchange event but he was not fit to travel.  I wasn’t completely heartbroken by this news because the event we were going to go to was the swap we went to last year and absolutely hated.  All the prices were jacked sky-high, nobody was willing to negotiate, and the venue was really poor: too small for the number of people and very dimly lit to make things even more challenging.  There’s nothing worse than straining your eyes while straining through crowds of rude people.  I am pretty short, so I get shouldered out at tables pretty easily.

The past few events we went to, we paid a little extra money for VIP tickets.  These normally permit entry into the event anywhere from 15-30 minutes early, meaning that you get first whack at people’s wares before the public masses are released into the venue.  This has been a fairly positive experience because we get to scope out everything we want, but the downside has always been that nobody wants to negotiate during the VIP time because it’s “too early”.  It’s a double-edged sword, really.  We have always wondered what would happen if we showed up at the end of the swap.  Sure, lots of the good stuff might be scooped up, but what about all those really expensive and rare things that people only want to negotiate for at the end when you are the last hope for a sale?  We put this theory to the test!

We ended up going to the tail end of the swap, arriving with just two hours left of a six hour event.  To be completely honest, it was pretty brutal.  I couldn’t tell if everything had just been completely picked over by the time we got there or if there was just nothing good to begin with.  The number of game vendors were few and far between at this event, which was even more reason for me to not consider going  back next year disappointing.  Despite this, we did manage to snag a few really good deals on some non-game items as well as as two games.

The games we picked up were Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego for Sega Master System complete in its case with all its sleuthing information manuals, as well as a loose copy of Contra Hard Corps.  The Contra game was an exciting find because we had a smokin’ deal fall through on us a few days prior.  Someone on the local classifieds site had been selling Contra Hard Corps, Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker and a bunch of other really awesome Sega Genesis games.  The best part?  They only wanted $50 for everything!  We were literally poised to leave for this person’s house after making a deal over email when the lady wrote us back saying her boyfriend had made a deal with someone else and that it was spoken for.  She broke the cardinal rule of making bargains: follow through on what you agreed upon.  It’s been several days now and I’m still reeling about it.  I could go on all day about poor bargaining etiquette, but I’ll spare you all the rant. Anyway, after that jarring experience it was nice to find a copy of the Contra game for my boyfriend who was still feeling a little burned over not getting that Genesis game lot. Here’s a photo of the two games:

 

Unfortunately, the Contra cartridge I managed to find at the swap was a Majesco release.  Majesco is a company that put out late runs of games, so the cartridge I found wasn’t an original “print”.  The cartridge label is of lower quality than the first releases (no gloss finish, grainier image), and it also lacks a title on its end label.  These are all things I didn’t notice before buying because I had gotten caught up in doing something nice for my boyfriend.  For one horrifying moment I thought I had been duped into buying a reproduction.  Thankfully, Contra Hard Corps being the Majesco release doesn’t make the game worth any less or play any differently, but it’s just an ugly cartridge.  Even the PCB is ugly.  Here are a few pictures of the game:

 

Apart from those, I managed to make out like a bandit with five great strategy/player’s guides as well as a handful of SNES game instruction manuals. The booklets were in decent shape with the exception of Zombies Ate My Neighbours, which came with a detached front cover and is missing the back cover altogether.  I got all of these for $5 total.

For me, finding strategy guides for Final Fantasy IV/Chrono Trigger (the PS1 version on the Final Fantasy Chronicles compilation disc) and Final Fantasy IX were the highlight of the trip.  FFIV and FFIX are my favourites in the series, and the vendor sold me both books for $5 because they were closing up and someone had forgotten to price them!  How convenient.  I also managed to snag two Zelda player’s guides: The Minish Cap and Ocarina of Time, as well as the one for Paper Mario for N64 for $40 (the seller originally wanted $85 for all three, so not too shabby.)  They are all in really great condition with their posters/extra goodies still intact.  I adore hard copy media like this because of its amazing art and extra content.  I can’t tell you how many times I read the manual for the Super Mario Bros. 1-3/Legend of Zelda games for NES as a kid scouring for hints, tips and trivia.

One thing that the books vendor did have was a consumer guide for early Nintendo games.  I LOVE that sort of thing and was holding it in my hands until I saw a $25 price tag on the back.  For something I might look through a few times, I couldn’t bring myself to buy it.  I don’t have any regrets yet.  I will keep you posted if those float to the surface.

Would I do another End-of-Swap Adventure again?  Probably not.  The pickings were slim, the vendors were tired and unfed, and some people even had some of their stuff packed up with over an hour left!  At least now we know what to expect at that time of day.  We might try aiming for just after the event start time next time so that we a) don’t have to wait in line, and b) can still be there early enough to find some good stuff.  It seems that all the stuff I am looking for gets snatched up pretty quickly.  Damn my obsession with obscure/rare/good RPGs.

Despite all my earlier negativity about the timing experiment as a whole, the swap was still a wonderful experience to share with my favourite loved one.  As I mentioned previously, this might be the end of swaps for the year unless we decide to go to a few later on that are at least a 6 hour drive away.  If it hasn’t snowed yet, we might just consider it!  We have a whole horrible, reclusive winter to plan more swap parameters to test.  Perhaps our time might be better spent priming our immune systems so we stop feeling ill on the days we need to go to these things!

Thanks for reading!

-GG

Antique Store Finds: Shinobi and Sonic CD

In an attempt to cheer me up after my two-day  couch-bound struggle with a tension headache, my boyfriend prodded me to the car and we took a drive through town to a couple of stores we haven’t been to lately.  One store we stopped off at is a mix of a hock shop and an antique store that has yielded some decent finds in the past.  The guy that runs the store knows us pretty well now.  He likes us so much that we sometimes get sneak peeks at games he has bought up before he puts them out if we catch him on the right day!  It’s a pretty awesome relationship.

The thing about this shop is that you can spend hours in it and keep seeing new things you didn’t notice before.  For example, this guy has had a shelf of Sega Master System games behind his cash since the first time we went in there (a few of which we’ve purchased), and today for the very first time we noticed he had a loose copy of Shinobi.  With a low price of $5, we decided to pick it up.  It’s pretty dirty and I didn’t get a chance to take the price sticker off or clean it before photographing it, but here it is:

Shinobi is not at all my type of game, but I suppose it’ll make the Alex Kidd in Shinobi World make a little more sense to me now.

The second thing we found today was an absolute steal.  After staring at the wall near the Sega Master System games for a little while longer, my boyfriend spotted a Sega CD box.  It wasn’t your typical long box hard case that you might expect, but rather a cardboard case with a manual and disc for Sonic CD.  I’ve heard that Sonic CD is one of the best games on the system, so we immediately wanted to find out how much the owner wanted for it.  Our jaws just about hit the floor when he said $2!  We checked out the disc and it was in pretty terrible shape with deep scratches that ran throughout the entire disc.  We ended up buying the game anyway and crossed our fingers that it could be fixed up.  After spending an additional $3 at a hock shop that does disc resurfacing, the game now looks practically new except for a faint reminder of the horrible scratches.  We tested the game out and it is as good as new!

Some die-hards of Sonic CD might notice that this disc is red instead of blue and that it’s a Not For Resale copy.  After a little research, I found out that this copy was a pack-in that was sold with the Sega Genesis CDX console, which explains its lack of normal case, etc.  As far as I understand, the game is the same as the normal version for the Sega CD, and that’ll normally run at least $30 complete online.  For $5 total after resurfacing, this was truly a great deal!  As a pretty dedicated Sonic fan, I was super pleased to add this to our collection.

For those of you that read my last post, acquiring the massive gaming lot of 450+ games and consoles is not looking good.  The guy decided to price out every item in his collection and came out with a staggering figure of almost $8000 USD.  My offer to him was far, far below that.  I’m not anticipating getting that lot of games, but thank you to everyone who sent me encouragement and all of their luck!  I really appreciate it!  As an eternal optimist and vivacious opportunity-taker, I restated my original offer to the seller today and am hoping that everyone else runs for the hills when they see how much he wants, leaving my offer as the only one standing.  It’s a long shot, but if I get this I’ll never have to spend money on games again.  I’ll have enough trades up my sleeve to negotiate just about anything I want at future swaps.

Thanks for reading!

-GG

The One Lovely Blog Award

After only six short months at this blogging thing, I am so humbled and honoured to have been nominated for another blog award: The One Lovely Blog Award.  My Lovely nominator was retr0pia75 who happens to host a ton of great gaming/media content from reviews to rants to lists to retr0spectives!  I would highly recommend sauntering over that way and having a look-see!  Retr0pia75 is also incredibly active on Twitter, so go there too.

The Rules:

1. Write an article accepting the award.
2. Thank the person you nominated you and put a link to their blog.
3. Tell the reader seven facts about yourself.
4. Nominate other blogs for the award.
5. Let them know that you nominated them.
6. Post the rules to let your followers know how it works.

I am always excited to find out more about fellow bloggers and enjoy the opportunity to share a little about myself and my life as well.  Behold the seven facts about myself below!

#1 – I can’t read music.

Despite my best efforts, I’ve never been able to get my head around this arduous task.  I managed to successfully play in several high school bands by writing my notes onto my sheet music and clapping out rhythms and learning by ear using a piano (this was before YouTube existed).  Sight-reading was then and still is my worst nightmare.  As a bonus fact, I started playing the keyboard when I was 4 when one of my siblings got into keyboard lessons.  The first song I ever figured out by ear was Silent Night.

#2 – My first part-time job was at a fast food burger joint.

Back when I was 16, I took my first part-time job in the fast food industry.  I met lots of interesting people and because I was so polite and well-spoken, I often had the pleasure of working on the drive-thru or in-store cashes.  To this day, I still dress my burgers in the same order I was trained there right down to the mustard W on the patty!

#3 – I’ve never dyed my hair.

In all my years as a brunette, I’ve never felt compelled to dye my hair to any other colour.  I’m quite happy with my natural look and can’t imagine dying it until after I have a significant number of greys starting to work their way in.

#4 – I am secretly Hank Hill in a woman’s body.

After the television series drew to a close, many people put away King of the Hill and have never looked back on it.  It remains my favourite television show.  I think this is in part due to how relatable Hank is for me.  His shock and discomfort in social situations is what I go through inwardly all the time!

#5 – I am a Crazy Plant Lady.  I have over 30 plants in my home.

From umbrella trees to African violets, I’ve got ’em all!  Due to the cold and wintery climate of my area of Canada, greenery is scarce for about six months of the year.  I try to compensate for that by filling my home with plants of all kinds.  My favourite plant is by far the prayer plant.  If you’ve never seen one, you should definitely have a look because their name comes from their nightly “praying”.  They’re beautiful.

#6 – I’m incredibly ticklish.

Especially my feet.  Getting a pedicure is an event that I love and hate all at the same time.  My boisterous laughter while having my feet rasped definitely ruins the spa atmosphere for others which is why I will normally treat myself about once a year.

#7 – I never took naps until I lived on my own.

My parents used to link daytime/evening naps with being sick.  If I had a nap and later decided that I wanted to go out with friends, I’d never hear the end of it!  Eventually, I just started fighting off the sleepiness so I could live my life without knocking heads with my family!  When I finally moved out, I started truly appreciating the joy of non-confrontational naps.  Ah, the little joys.

Though these might not be the most interesting or conventional Self-facts out there, I hope that you enjoyed them.  My nominations for the One Lovely Blog Award are as follows:

Next Level Reviews

Falcon Reviews

I Heart Old Games

Thank you very much for reading and for the continued support in this blogging venture of mine!

A little update on the retro game collecting: I am currently trying to snag an enormous game lot of 450+ games/consoles from a man who is getting rid of his entire collection at once.  Wish me luck!

-GG

This Thanksgiving I am Thankful For…

In light of my recent dry spell in retro game hunting, I’ve been turning to alternative sources to find games.  One website I found was an auction site that seemed promising.  After bowing out of a few auctions that pushed up past what I was willing to spend, I finally managed to win some!  To be quite honest, this experience was a nice change from eBay and other sites that arbitrarily assign prices to games (Lukie Games, anyone?)  These auctions all started at $3 and only went as high as people pushed them.  The unfortunate part is that there was a 15% auction fee that could have dangerously inflated higher-priced games very quickly.  I understand the purpose of these fees, especially in the case of some lower auction prices.  The company obviously has to ensure some potential profit margin and to pay people working for the company.  What I wasn’t expecting was to pay taxes on what I won!  Canadian taxes are 13% in my province, so with the auction fees it was pretty much 30% extra altogether.  I think I still got a good deal on what I picked up, but it would’ve been a better deal if I hadn’t had to pay taxes.

The first game I got from the auction was Kirby & the Amazing Mirror for Game Boy Advance.  I accidentally picked up Nightmare in Dream Land for GBA one time mistaking it for this one, and I’ve been on the hunt for it ever since.  I got this copy for $20.

The other game I got from the auction was Thousand Arms for PS1.  My desire to own and play PS1 RPGs is strong.  I’ve heard mixed opinions about Thousand Arms, but I think it’d be a fun game to play through.  In particular, I love the idea of the dating simulation aspect.  You apparently get to woo women in the game which in turn increases the strength of your various weapons.  I’m always pretty picky in video game dating simulations.  I once restarted Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility because I married the miner.  He was never home when I went to bed and didn’t make me a lunch in the mornings.  The fisherman though… he took good care of me.

Here’s a photo of the game, its instruction booklet and its discs.  Everything is in really excellent shape.  The discs look practically untouched.  I got this one for $65.

Interestingly, the previous owner didn’t mail away for free goodies (soundtrack, desktop backgrounds and other multimedia!)  I was very sad to see that the mail-in card was still attached in the manual.  It’s too bad that the offer expired in the year 2000.  I personally wouldn’t have missed out on an opportunity for free mail-in stuff, especially with only $2 shipping and handling!  What a steal!

I mentioned in my last post that I was interested in picking up a copy of Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon.  I jumped on an opportunity when it arose on eBay and sure enough, I now own a copy of that game as well.  I managed to snag that one for $25 with shipping included.  The disc looks brand new, and the instruction manual was also included.  The case that the game came in was an old Blockbuster rental case.  I was pleasantly surprised!  I actually like having that little piece of history in my home!

Last but certainly not least was a great discovery at a hock shop.  My boyfriend had spotted Shining Force for the Sega Genesis sitting in a pile of boxed games.  They wanted $65 for the game before taxes, but with a little schmoozing, I managed to get them to $65 with taxes in.  It was an incredibly steep price, but it’s really rare that I’ve seen any of the Shining Force games in town, nevermind in that condition!  Behold the glory of my complete copy of Shining Force!

Unfortunately, this is normally the time of year when people generally slow down with video game donations to used stores.  Yard sales are over and the spring/summer purging frenzy has drawn to a close.  I will continue to post as often as I come across things, but it will likely become less frequent.  If people are interested, I will do some posts on what already exists in our collection since there was so much that I had already found before starting this blog.

On the bright side, my boyfriend and I are trying to find another swap in the province to get to before the end of this year.  The prospects are grim since most venues would involve a tremendously long trip, but we are considering it just for fun!  The roads here are difficult to travel once snow settles in, so we are going to make the best of highway travel while we still can.

If I don’t manage to post again beforehand, I hope that you all enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!  Per my usual Thanksgiving tradition, I will be watching the Peanuts Thanksgiving episodes on DVD with some kind of warm beverage followed by getting out to see some beautiful fall colours on the hiking trails.

Thanks for reading!

-GG

Say Hi to Tails

I’ve had one of the busiest Septembers I can remember in a long while.  I wish I could say that it has been one of the busiest with respect to finding some new (used) games, but alas… this was not the case.  I am sad to report that a spontaneous and highly inconvenient onset of the common cold kept my boyfriend and I from travelling to a swap this month.  I was really, really sad about that.  The swap we missed was a repeat of an event from earlier this year that we both had an amazing time at.  To add more insult to injury, it was the second last swap of the year that we were planning to attend.  The very last swap of the year for us is next month and I’m less than excited for it.  We went last year it was hands down the worst game exchange experience I’ve had to date.  I could rant away about why it was a negative experience, but I’ll spare you all.

Despite a general game-finding slump, I have had a little bit of luck tracking down a few interesting things.  The first that I found was a PSP for $15 at the thrift store.  It has a tiny crack at the top left corner of the screen (you can see this in the photo below) but came with a screen protector and its charging cord.  The handheld had also been tested before being put out on the sales floor, but it didn’t come with any games at all.

One game that I’m really interested in picking up (maybe for the PSP) is Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon.  With the recent reawakening of my Harvest Moon obsession (you can thank the actual September Harvest Moon and my playthrough of Spring in Harvest Moon 64 for that…), I am just itching to get my hands on more farming fun!  I am debating between the PSP and PS2 versions, though.  Does anyone have any recommendations for good PSP games?  I’m totally in the dark here and will appreciate any help I can get, as always!

I also managed to get my hands on Actraiser and Actraiser 2 for the SNES.  Funnily enough, I saw these games in town at a pawn shop about a month ago and scoffed at the (what I thought to be outrageous) prices of both games.  When I travelled to the last swap, the prices for those games were even steeper there.  I spent a long time debating whether or not to buy from this particular pawn shop because I’m not a fan of the owner.  The few times I’ve tried to negotiate with him, he has told me that if I don’t want to pay his price that someone else will (great sales tactics, eh?)  When I finally decided to bite the bullet and try to haggle with this guy, I lucked out and dealt with a different salesperson altogether.  He actually dropped the price for me and waived the taxes!  I got both games for $60, and they’re both in top condition.  Actraiser 2’s label looks a little gooey right now but after slightly fading a label trying to remove goo in the past, I’m inclined to leave it for the time being!

I don’t know why I’m so bad at doing my research lately, but I was under the impression that Actraiser 2 would have all the same gameplay elements as Actraiser: side-scrolling platforming sections as well as a city builder component.  Although the platforming stages seem fun and lovely to look at, the city building/RPG aspect was what I was really interested in with these games.  Much to my dismay, Actraiser 2 got rid of all the city building and just has more of the platforming with some added bells and whistles.  It still looks fun and I don’t regret buying it, but it’s definitely not at the top of my list to get into for the moment.

Among other discoveries were an unmodded Xbox for $10 without cords, two modded Xboxes with cords/controllers for $50 (these will make some mighty fine Christmas gifts), and a GameCube memory card for a screamin’ deal of $5.  You can never have too many memory cards!  That about sums it up, though.

I am also hoping to post soon about our successful quest to obtain a Broadcast Video Monitor (BVM, which I always want to call Brofessional Video Monitor in my head.)  It’s always been my boyfriend’s dream to build an arcade machine, and our latest acquisition has allowed this to come to fruition.  I will try to pry his “in progress” photos away from him and post something about that soon.  We are really excited about it!

I hope all is well for you all.  Thanks for reading!

-GG

My Favourite Colours: Red, Blue and Yellow

One of my collecting goals is not only to collect only for myself, but also for some loved ones that have expressed interest in it.  I have a couple of siblings, but my lovely sister is someone that gamed a bit in her youth alongside me.  Eventually she moved on to sports and other kinds of activities as she got older, but this past summer she became absolutely smitten with Pokemon Go.  I had a long conversation with her about Pokemon based on the little that I personally know about the franchise and probed for any interest she might have in playing the original games for Game Boy, Game Boy Colour, or Game Boy Advance.  She seemed pretty intrigued, and so my quest began to find her some games.

I’ve mentioned before that I have a few copies of Pokemon Gold and Silver but most of my multiples do not save.  We are anxiously awaiting Christmas in hopes of getting some kind of soldering station to start replacing batteries.  I also didn’t want to part with my single copies of Blue, Ruby or Sapphire because I haven’t finished them yet.  I was looking for a starting point, and thankfully the other day an ad popped up online that had just what I was looking for.  Here’s a photo of what I ran across:

This was perfect!  I tested out the games and you’ll never guess what: Gold doesn’t save!!  I don’t know what it is with my luck and Pokemon Gold cartridges, but there has to be some deep-rooted conspiracy here.  Anyway, I’ve decided to give my sister the GBC, my saving copy of Gold or Silver (I’ll hopefully be able to repair the other copies at some point soon enough), and the bad label Blue.  I spoke with her last night, and she was absolutely thrilled.  I’m happy to be able to give the gift of gaming to my loved ones.

What I love most about this lot is how I came to have it.  The guy selling hadn’t listed a price in the ad, so I inquired what he thought he might want to get for everything.  His initial response was $200 which I felt was way too high.  Based on the recent inflation in Pokemon prices though, I wasn’t surprised.  I told him that I wasn’t really willing to pay more than half of his asking price and that the most I wanted to pay was $110.  I had thanked him for his time and thought no more of it, but he emailed me several times and dropped his price down to $130.  After biting my nails, I decided to stick to my guns and be firm, telling him that $110 was the highest I would go.  It took a whole day, but he finally emailed me back and said that I could have it for that price!  Hooray!

Even more exciting is that I now have all three of the first generation Pokemon games.  I already had a nice copy of Blue before I found this lot, but now I can add Red and Yellow to my personal collection.  Also, I can finally stop kicking myself for passing up on Red a few months ago for $20 – it had a really crappy label.  I hate having regrets, but good things come to those who wait [insert other cliches here].

I am really glad to have found these games!  My sister will be able to start her own journey as a Pokemon trainer the way she was originally meant to.  Now if I can just get her to watch the cartoon and like it…

Thanks for reading!

-GG

Classifieds Success: Space Station Silicon Valley

The Nintendo 64 is the Nintendo console I’d say I’m the least familiar with along with the GameCube.  Apart from playing Mario Kart 64 in my best friend’s basement growing up, I never had an N64 in my possession until I was in my early 20s when a friend lent his to me for a few months.  In that time I dabbled in Super Smash Bros., Super Mario 64, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.  What fun that was until I had to give it all back.

Since acquiring my own N64 last year, I’ve managed to pick up some greats for the N64.  Apart from games from franchises I know and love – The Legend of Zelda, Harvest Moon, Super Mario, Yoshi games – I was at a loss for what to track down and play.  Mr. Panda of Mr. Panda’s Video Game Reviews was gracious enough to leave me a long and detailed list of recommendations for the system in the recent past, one of which was Space Station Silicon Valley.  Thankfully he did because I managed to find a boxed copy of the game in town for $60!  Here’s a photo of the game, its box, and its skinny, skinny game manual (it’s 16 pages long, but is mostly a “notes section” and game controls.)

As usual, I watched and read few reviews on the game to get a feel for what it was all about.  The plot premise is a bit bizarre.  You’re essentially an obliterated robot that has to take over the bodies of animals to achieve various tasks.  From my first impressions, the game is absolutely hilarious.  I loaded up a save file on the cartridge to run around and see what it’s like and it had me laughing at the ridiculousness of stomping on a sheep and subsequently taking over its body for my own evildoing.  I love puzzle games and ones with goals that you have to meet, and this is a great combination of those two things.  I also like that the gameplay is casual.  It’s something you can put down and come back to later.  I seem to do this a lot with games so it’ll be a refreshing change from plot-driven RPGs that fade from the mind when you’re away for too long.

Has anyone heard of or played this game?  I’m curious to know if my first impressions are as accurate as I hope they are!  The online fans of this game desperately want a sequel, so that’s always a great indication of an excellent game!

Thanks for reading!

-GG

Auction Spoils: Soul Blazer for SNES

There’s no nicer noise than my mailbox opening and closing when I’m waiting for something I’ve ordered to show up in the mail.  A few posts ago I mentioned winning an eBay auction for the first time in a while.  The auction was for Soul Blazer, the first game in a SNES trilogy in which Illusion of Gaia (Illusion of Time in other areas) and Terranigma are the game’s successors.  Talk about a trio of pure awesomeness!

This trilogy first came to my attention when I was visiting with some family last summer.  My cousin owns most of the SNES RPG library (I’m honestly extremely jealous of him), and as I was talking about my quest to procure many of the great SNES RPGs and enjoy them for the first time, he mentioned that his favourite game on the system was Illusion of Gaia.  It wasn’t a game I’d ever heard of as this was back in my early days of researching all the SNES RPGs, so I started to do a little digging.  After reading many reviews and liking what I saw, I eventually ordered a copy from eBay.  Then, out of nowhere, I found a complete boxed copy of the game at the local thrift store and scooped that up.  I didn’t dive in right away though.  I didn’t want to start Illusion of Gaia until I could get my hands on the other two games.  I like to try to play a series of games close together if I can.

Terranigma was next on my list.  Knowing that it had never had a North American release made it a little more cost effective to buy since many report the game as one of the best RPGs of all time.  If that is truly the case, an authentic North American release of the cartridge would have probably been close in price to the likes of Chrono Trigger and Earthbound ($190-$300).  A reproduction cartridge with an English translation was available on the Game Reproductions website with the PAL version’s label art for about $60 CAD.  The game looks and plays wonderfully.  For Canadians reading, if you want to buy from this site, just be aware that shipping can get a bit complicated.  The person running the site is really great to work with, and we were able to find a solution.  It’s best to inquire before you buy!

The last of the lot to get was Soul Blazer.  The first time I looked up pricing for the game, I was honestly shocked.  It was almost $100, which was double or triple what I had paid for loose copies of the other two games in the bunch.  I didn’t feel ready to pay that kind of money when everyone was telling me that the latter two games in the trilogy were better and had cost me far less.  At the last swap, I had seen several copies of Soul Blazer priced at $100 and up and had felt a little discouraged.  Upon returning home and perusing eBay for a sliver of hope for a price drop, I fought to the death with an auction sniper (I’m assuming the other person died figuratively from the brilliance of my win, of course) and came away with the game for $86, a price that included ludicrous shipping costs to Canada.  This might not seem like a tremendous discount, but it’s the cheapest I’ve ever seen this game.  Who knows.  The price of games might plummet tomorrow, but I don’t like passing up on opportunities when they present themselves.  I invest in games to keep them forever so the cost never feels wasted.

After all that, here is a photo of the trilogy: Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, and Terranigma.

I’ve heard such great things about all these games.  Knowing that Illusion of Gaia is my cousin’s favourite will make it special for me to play through.  His opinion matters immensely since he is an extremely seasoned SNES RPG player and knows what is good and what isn’t so good.  I am also tickled by the fact that Quintet, the video game developing company that oversaw these three games, was also responsible for other notable SNES works like Actraiser 1 and 2 and Robotrek.  Those last three games have made it onto my list for the next swap, so hopefully I will find them.  I think there are only two more swaps left until next spring, so I’m hoping to make the most of them both!

Thanks for reading!

-GG

The Retro Game Spring Floweth

The retro game spring seems to be flowing again!

Borrowed from RPGClassics.com’s Faxanadu WT

Maybe people are getting ready for a season change and are looking to part with some belongings before winter, or maybe it’s just coincidence.  Either way, there are a ton of new ads appearing online and there have been a few games that have come out of the woodwork in shops over the last week or so.  Despite the online ad surge, I’ve been having my best luck in the hock shops and thrift stores this week.

The first game I managed to pick up was an RPG for the Playstation called Eternal Eyes.  It was a bit of an impulse buy because the hock shop was having a 50% off sale on many newer generation games (all generations of Playstation and Xbox games, really.)  What got me interested was what my boyfriend showed me the back of the game’s case: there was a Chocobo-esque character among some JRPG-ish-looking folks.  That sounded like a recipe for a good time!  It also helped that the game was only $5, and I’ve gambled more away on sillier things.  After getting into a brief argument with the cashier about how beat up a disc should be before it goes into the resurfacer (I won), the game was ours.  When we got home, I read up a bit and apparently the game is a tactical RPG.  I haven’t played much of those at all but I am looking forward to giving this one a whirl.  The only other strategy RPG that I have is Final Fantasy Tactics, which I’ve heard is a cornerstone of the genre.  Eternal Eyes is supposed to be mediocre, but maybe it’s a good place to start.  It wouldn’t feel good going from great games in a genre to ones that aren’t so great, so hopefully this will be a good introduction to the game style.

Here is a picture of the case.  It’s a bit beaten up, but the disc is essentially flawless after resurfacing.  The cover art is far from stunning, but the swords and castles are promising.  Also, red eyes!  That’s a pretty indicative feature of malevolence.  I always love a good antagonist in a game.

The second game I found hanging around a hock shop was Adventures of Lolo 2 for NES.  The Lolo games are so fun and cute!  The music is some of the most memorable I’ve heard in an NES game, and any kind of puzzle game is attractive to me.  This copy of the game was priced pretty cheaply compared to what I had seen it going for online, so I pounced.  I picked it up for $30.  I wish I had gotten it for less, but you can’t win them all.  After a thorough PCB contact cleaning, the game was up and running.  The cartridge itself has some red marker on it that only mostly comes off and there’s some sticker residue that has merged with the plastic to form some horrible hybrid, but the label is nice!  Here’s a photo!

The last game I picked up was for the Game Boy Advance, and it’s a Harvest Moon title.  You might recall that I very recently picked up Friends of Mineral Town for the GBA, but I managed to find More Friends of Mineral Town for $15 at the thrift shop.

I love Harvest Moon games and will pick them up whenever I see them, but I honestly thought that this game was a sequel to Friends of Mineral Town.  I was wrong.  Apparently the gameplay is identical to that of Friends of Mineral Town, but one of the key differences is that you play as a girl and can woo guys in the game instead of girls.  To pander to the female demographic, you can also change your outfit?  I don’t know that that would’ve been a selling feature for me as a young girl looking for a game, but I digress.  Looking at online stores, if the two games are essentially the exact same with a different “protagonist”, I’m surprised at the price difference between them.  Friends of Mineral Town goes for about $10-$20 more than More Friends of Mineral Town!  I also found out today that Friends of Mineral Town and More Friends of Mineral Town can talk to A Wonderful Life and Another Wonderful Life, respectively, on the GameCube.  I don’t really know how or to what degree, but that was a neat little piece of trivia I picked up from the Interwebs.

I am pretty happy with all the nice discoveries for the week so far.  I feel very diversified since all my purchases were from different systems, which isn’t usually the case.  It has been a little while since I’ve found anything for Playstation!

As I’m finding more and more great games, it’s becoming apparent that I really need to sit down and spend some time playing them!  With summer renovations drawing to a close, I have all the time I can possibly want to continue addressing this game backlog.  I’m hoping to do more online streaming on Twitch sooner than later.

Thanks for reading, as always.  I hope you’re all enjoying a four-day week if you were lucky enough to have a long weekend this past weekend!

-GG