The Game Exchange (!!!)

We just got back from two days of lots of driving and lots of exciting video game hunting.  I am exhausted but excited about how things played out, so I will take the time to post about it while it’s still fresh in my mind.

As planned, on the way to the actual game exchange, we ventured to a huge flea/antique market.  There are normally two video game vendors there: a nice one, and the most horrible human being in the entire history of time that also happens to sell a massive collection of excellent video games.  We visited the nice guy first, but he didn’t really have anything special at all.  Eventually, we went to see the Evil One.  Every interaction I’ve ever had with this guy has been negative.  On a previous trip to his booth, he asked me if I had just been by his booth with another guy not long before in front of my boyfriend.  When I said no, he went on and on about how it had to have been me and started naming off all the games “I” had wanted.  At the time, my relationship with my current boyfriend was brand new, so it was mildly awkward to say the least.  My second past encounter involved me asking him a price on Link’s Awakening for Game Boy, and he had abruptly told me it was $60 for just the cartridge.  As I was trying to negotiate with him, he started talking to another customer who wanted a different game altogether, and the price of that one was also $60…. can you see a pattern here?  Anyway, this particular time, I tried to use his $60 trick against him by asking him the cost of a few PS1 games (which were all conveniently $60) and then asking him the price on something significantly more expensive.  I was trying to get him to sell me Lunar: Silver Star Story for PS1 for $60.  When I asked, he drew an imaginary line in his case and told me that all the games above that were very expensive.  He gave me a hard price of $225 for Lunar.  I almost laughed out loud at how dickish he is.  He apparently knows stuff about the games he sells, but intentionally overcharges everyone that wouldn’t know any better.  When I told him it wasn’t worth quite that much, I got a whole spiel about how it was, how everything was in mint condition, how I was a nice lady with impeccable taste in games but how I didn’t know what I was talking about… etc.  Defeated, we left the market and continued on our way to our destination.

The game exchange was the next morning, and as I mentioned previously, we had been in touch with the organizer who offered us free tickets to the event because we had travelled so far to attend.  By the time we arrived, there were already massive lines.  We walked by everyone and went up to the desk.  I was pretty nervous because I was afraid the organizer more on his mind than remembering me, but sure enough, he smiled, shook both our hands, and handed over our tickets.  We got in about 30 minutes later, and it was just… vast in there.  I’ve been to a few of these events in the past, and this was considerably bigger than anything I’d been to previously.

My intention was to find EarthBound.  The last event we attended had none at all, and it was disappointing since I had been ready to buy at that point.  We found a table selling SNES, so I inquired about it, and sure enough, they had a copy!  The downside: it had a damaged label.  I was torn (pardon the pun) because I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to buy it if it was the only copy at the event.  I had also seen prices as high as $300 for this game and at $250 damaged occasionally, so I reluctantly bit the bullet.  I had brought some games to trade: Super Mario World, Illusion of Gaia, Lufia & the Fortress of Doom, Super Mario Kart and Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (keep in mind that we got these as part of a huge lot of 189 games and 16 consoles for $340 total, so the games came to me for practically nothing, about $1.80 each!)  When he added up what he felt those were worth, it came out to $230, and he wanted $250 for the game.  I paid him $20, and off I went.  Not all that long later, I saw another vendor that had a pristine copy of the game that also wanted $250.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt my heart hit the floor so fast or so hard.  I asked the guy if he’d trade me with a little extra cash for his good label copy, and he said he would need at least $80 to cover the “difference”  because of the label damage.  I was a bit floored and felt ripped off by the other vendor, and that feeling didn’t really leave me for the rest of the swap.  I was tempted to confront the guys I had traded with but decided against it.  I am not particulary confrontational by nature, and after all, I did agree to the deal.  My boyfriend and I rationalized the shitty feelings with a few thoughts: (a) I buy games to play and not to flip so the condition doesn’t matter, (b) I didn’t actually sink $250 into it (it was more like $30), and (c) the other guy might not have even taken my trades at the value the other guy did.  Exhale.  It was fine, and I now own EarthBound, even if it is a little ugly.

There are several other purchases from the day to mention, including StarTropics for NES.  I had watched a review on the game recently and wanted to pick it up.  I had avoided it until now because always thought it had something to do with army guys (Tropic Thunder?), but apparently not!  It looks like a really cute little RPG.  For the PS1, I also got Grandia and Lunar: Silver Star Story for $50 and $110, respectively.  Lunar was in excellent condition and came complete with the cloth map and its box.  I have a tremendous urge to use the map as a handkerchief since it looks and feels like one, but I won’t.  Handkerchiefs are gross.  I also picked up two GBA games: The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap and Golden Sun: The Lost Ages.  Until recently, I hadn’t heard at all about Golden Sun and its successors, but I was swung by a good review on those games as well (I picked up the first one a few weeks ago at the thrift store).  The Minish Cap looks absolutely adorable, and I am really looking forward to playing through that one.  Each of those two games came to me for $25.  I saw some copies of Four Swords today, but I really want to play the GameCube version instead.  I heard that it’s a longer version of the GBA version with more story.  I like story!  I only saw one GameCube copy that had gotten swept up by the time I came back around again.  Oh well!

For anyone who might be wondering, my boyfriend got a big box copy of Half-Life for PC, as well as Rampage for Sega Master System and some shooting game for Genesis whose name escapes me at the moment (he bought the light gun and bought the game simply to have a chance to use it!)  Here’s a picture of all the things I got at the swap.

In addition to the aforementioned, I also picked up a few manuals for Zelda games that I already own for $5 each.  I finally found the one for A Link to the Past.  I’ve had the cartridge in the box for many years but have never had the pleasure of owning the manual.  I think one of the things that got me smiling the most in the entire day’s adventure was finding the mouse for the SNES.  I’ve seen them around bundled with Mario Paint for at least $30, and I snagged this one by itself for $5!  I grabbed it off the table when someone else was eyeballing it and gave the vendors my long-winded story about not being able to play Mario Paint at all for the last few years.  They politely smiled and nodded as good vendors normally do.  I also got Might and Magic III recently and it also requires a mouse, which makes the timing of this find pretty perfect!

The only thing that I have yet to see if I’ll kick myself over after a good night’s sleep is not picking up E.V.O. today for $250.  That was the cheapest I’ve ever seen it, but I passed in the end.  $250 straight up for a game is a little more than I’m willing to spend.  Bringing trade bait and dealing in game currency is normally good by me, but trade bait is hard to come by.  I’m officially out of good doubles to trade with, but I’m sure more will come.  Maybe that game will come down in price soon.  I’ve seen the downward trend with other popular games like Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask.  They were at least $10-$20 more a few swaps ago.

Well, that just about sums it up.  Today was very up and down, but at the end of it, I don’t have regrets.  I literally got EarthBound for $30, along with a whole bunch of other really awesome games.  I also had a lovely weekend away with my boyfriend doing something we really love together.  I can’t wait for the next one.

Thanks for reading, as always!

-GG

SNES RPGs and PC Murderfests

I got a text this afternoon from my friend whose wife works at the local thrift shop.  He had a tip for me from his wife: a whole bunch of SNES RPGs in their boxes had just been put out at the store.  I texted him back while I was fumbling down the stairs to get to my car as fast as possible to let him know I was on my way there, thanked him profusely, and got on the road.  The venture to the store was something straight out of a Mr. Bean episode: I hit practically every red light and got stuck behind a guy doing 40 km/h in a 50 km/h zone down a long stretch through town that is hard to pass in.  It felt like a way longer drive than the actual 15 minutes it took me to get there.

When I got to the store, I had to remind myself not to run to the glass case, however tempting it might be.  I also had to remind myself that I was an adult in public with control over my emotions, mostly so I didn’t tip anyone off that I knew ahead of time about the games.  Their store policy explicitly states that “insider info” is a big no-no, and I didn’t want to expose my friend’s wife.  When I finally got to the glass case and peered inside, it was like looking into a dream world.  So many good games were in one place at once at a fraction of the usual cost.  We paid $400 CAD total for everything and thankfully had a discount coupon!  Most of them came with manuals and with their respective maps!  See below for more details on the specifics for what came along each game.

Illusion of Gaia: game, manual, map
Lufia & the Fortress of Doom: game, manual, map
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals: game, map
Tecmo: Secret of the Stars: game, photocopied manual
Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra: game, manual
Paladin’s Quest: game, manual, map
Skuljagger: Revolt of the Westicans: game, manual

We also got a loose copy of Paperboy 2, but it was unworthy to be photographed among these other beauties!

In preparation for the game exchange next weekend, I’ve been looking up some SNES RPG titles to see what I should be keeping my eyes open for, and some of these games are now crossed off the list – I live for crossing things off of lists!  I already had loose copies of Illusion of Gaia and Lufia & the Fortress of Doom, but now I have them complete and might consider trading away my loose copies for more expensive and elusive games, like Earthbound or E.V.O. if I can ever find them.  Completely new to me are the other five games.  I’ve heard excellent things about Paladin’s Quest, the Tecmo RPG and Lufia II, so I’m pumped to play those!  I’m really putting a dent into my SNES RPG collecting lately.  I’m really happy about it!

Phew.  I was in a bit of a rut there.  I’m happy I finally found something Super exciting!  Now if only I could play them as fast as they’re coming in.  I’m super slow at playing through games because I like to enjoy them and normally play them blind.  I’m playing through Yoshi’s Island on Twitch these days and going for 100% completion.  You can find my channel at http://www.twitch.tv/hungrygoriya if you’re interested in catching a stream sometime.

In addition to this, we also ran into a whole pile of older PC games at a different thrift store.  My boyfriend, being the lover of all things retro PC, was rightfully excited about all of them.  My personal pick in the pile was Diablo II, a game I’ve played in the past but never finished or owned (I got stuck in the jungle area, lost my body in a cave of spiders, and never managed to keep going after that.)  It came with the original disks and the expansion as well.  Most of the games were in fairly good condition with the exception of the Titanic game, which I picked up mostly as a consequence of watching JonTron’s Titanic/Titenic Saga.  I desperately need to know if this game fits in among those horrendous games, if it works.  We paid $18 CAD for the PC game lot shown below.

So, all in all, it was a good day for thrifting.  As much as my wallet hurts from the day’s purchases, I will probably still keep looking today and leading up to the weekend before our trip to the game swap.

Thank you for reading.

-GG

Discount Game Bin Wonders

I was shopping out of town yesterday for a new shower curtain at a local grocery store that also carries housewares and some electronics.  As always, I ventured into the video game section.  I ran across a sale bin that was full of Nintendo DS games, expecting to see your usual Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Hannah Montana and other coaster-worthy games.  Much to my surprise, they had a good game among the would-be coasters: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.  This is one of the last Zelda games I have left to collect to complete my pre-3DS collection in cartridge form (others include Minish Cap, Oracle of Ages, and Four Swords/Adventures.)

So, I’ve heard that Spirit Tracks has gotten a lot of poor reviews because the developers and writers tore away from the conventions of classic Zelda by incorporating trains.  Windwaker had a boat and people still fiercely love that one, so I’m not sure why alternative land transportation has garnered so much more hatred.  I knew the feelings in general about the game were negative, but this game was priced at $0.94. Canadian.  Not even the very worst games are priced that low in retail stores, or even in flea markets for that matter.

I was baffled and picked up a copy, wondering if it was actually the original thing since I hadn’t ever really looked into the handheld DS Zelda games very much.  I also wondered if the store had made some sort of mistake.  After all, the game sticker had said Wii Scooby on it, but they all said that.  To compound the situation’s lack of clarity, I have a lack of data capability on my phone and couldn’t look anything up.  I bought a copy anyway and crossed my fingers that it wasn’t some sort of trick.

After driving home, I decided to do a little research.  The sealed, brand new copies of this game are still going for at least $30 CAD on many different sites.  Sometimes it’s even double that depending on the source.  Not sure what to think, I was kicking myself for not buying all of them when I had the chance.  There were at least 10 copies there in the bin, and with the Curse of Hindsight Revelation weighing down on me, I was cringing at the thought of the required several hour drive to go back and procure them.  In desperation, I contacted a friend of mine that lives there.  He has agreed to go and pick up however many copies he can find that are left, so hopefully he does manage to get a few.  I’d love to have them for the game swap coming up, or even maybe to sell at a discounted rate to fund my other gaming purchases.  This game collecting hobby certainly doesn’t come cheap!

Cross your fingers for me, and thanks for reading.

-GG

 

Update: There were no more Spirit Tracks games at the store when my friend went back to check for us.  The store either realized their error, or someone bought them all up.  Either way, I am at peace with the fact that I only paid $1 for a probably great game that goes for at least $30-40 at a screaming sale price.  Next time I will have to somehow be more prepared.

The Yard Sale Weekend

I can honestly say that this weekend was my bravest yard sale weekend to date.  I probably went to at least 10 in total, and I actually got out of the car most of the time (yes, this is normally a problem for me since I get shy, and also have a crippling fear of offending anyone that I don’t buy from… I can barely make eye contact.)  Unfortunately, I found a big pile of nothing at all with respect to video games except for loads of the old “Cereal Box” games like Scrabble and Monopoly.

Despite the lack of cool finds, we did try out a new flea market.  It was meh overall, mostly filled with those greenish-black statues of cats and dogs, really expensive non-antiques posing as real antiques, furniture we could never fit into the car, and many, many dustables.  The only video game-related things that were there were Gran Turismo and Crash Bash for PS1, both with no booklets.  I already own Crash Bash, and Gran Turismo doesn’t seem like my cup of tea.  I left them both behind.  My boyfriend found some Supertramp vinyl, so he was happy. I don’t know that we’ll make another special trip back out that way any time soon.

On our way back home, we followed some yard sale signs in hopes of striking big after a mostly unsuccessful venture.  When the signs took us down a highway we hadn’t travelled on before, we didn’t think much of it and pressed on.  Eventually, the paved road we were driving on turned to dirt road surrounded by bush.  As the kilometers kept piling on, we were starting to think we were on the ass end of a horrible prank where the yard sale is really a murder shed or something like that.  Every once in a while we’d see another sign, so we knew we were still on the right track (although we half expected the arrows on the signs to start pointing in the direction we had come from after a while in typical horror movie fashion.)  Not letting the Yard Sale of Ultimate Doom and Despair and its Signs of Sorrow get the best of us, we eventually got to the place: a weird trailer park.  I call it weird because it looked very unorganized.  Normally, trailers have designated lots and there is some sort of order to things, but these trailers just looked randomly placed in this huge open area.  Near the gates were two fold-out tables accompanied by two people who were staring down our vehicle as we slowed to see the wares.  No smiles.  Just staring and what felt a little like contempt.  It didn’t feel right, so we turned around and went back after all that.  It truly looked like they only had a bunch of vases and other dishes/glassware to sell, anyway.  The true highlight of this random adventure and an obvious benefit to being at the back of beyond was seeing a very young moose with its gangly legs and its dopey face.  We kept our distance in case it decided to charge the car or investigate us, so no pictures were taken.  So cute though.  It even chose to cross the road at the sign indicating a moose crossing.

An aside: If I may mention one last unnerving thing about this yard sale attempt, it’s that when we finally did turn on the GPS to see if a town was coming up, we realized we were on a dead-end road to nowhere and were approaching the end of it.  There is nothing that gives me the willies more than seeing roads that just end.  No alternate route back, no cell service, no township, and also not having any clue where we were.  If we had been travelling in the dark, I would’ve needed a Raffi compilation just to keep from screaming!

Anyway, I will press onward!  Next weekend is a big gaming event, and our hopes are high.  I’m still refining my list of things to search for.  Hopefully I’ll actually have some good buys to report soon.

I hope you’re all enjoying this lovely Victoria Day weekend!

-GG

Douchebaggery: The Unanswerers of Emails

Well, I’m stuck in a bit of a video game hunting rut.  I’ve replied to several ads online that have had interesting games that I’d like to buy up (Vic 20 + games, some NES stuff, etc.) but it seems that nobody is interested in writing me back.  I’m not sure where proper social etiquette has dissipated off to, but Douchbaggery seems to be rearing its ugly head more and more in the form of Email Unanswerers.  I’ve tried my luck at some garage/yard sales as well as an estate sale and have come back empty-handed in those mediums as well.  To add insult to injury here, the only thing I’ve been able to find at the local thrift store is an N64 console with a power cord, but no AV connector, controllers or games!  And they’re asking $50!!  It’s an obnoxious price, especially for something that you can’t even test when you get it home.

And so I wait, patiently.  To quell my aching heart, I just emailed a guy who is having a yard sale in a few weekends to see if the video games he’s advertising are for retro consoles.  If yes, at least I’ll have something guaranteed to look forward to.

In brighter news, my boyfriend and I are going to head to a game exchange in a couple of weekends.  At these big gaming events, we have had touch and go luck depending on who has shown up to sell their wares.  The Hock Shops just seem to suck all the fun out of the hunt by charging taxes on their games (I get it.  They’re a business that has to charge taxes, but I think they should lower their prices for the day to be competitive with everyone else rather than asking $10-20 more for the same stuff as the table next door.)  On occasion, we have found great games for reasonable prices, or bought up manuals for loose games that we already own (I am a huge sucker for instruction manuals… I love the art and the tips and the bad translations.)  My boyfriend often makes out like a bandit since he is a lover of retro PC gaming, and the prices for boxed old PC games has not become even nearly as inflated as the console games have.  For me, being primarily a console gamer, I normally end up spending more than I want to.  I am also a horrible haggler, so that is obviously not working in my favour.  I’ll always make a lower offer, but I won’t press if they say no.  I’ve left some true gems behind because I’m cheap as hell.

Speaking of haggling skills, here’s an aside: At a yard sale yesterday, an elderly man wanted to buy an ancient all-metal sprinkler that was in questionable working condition.  He asked the woman running the sale how much she wanted for it and she asked for $2.  He countered her offer with 5 cents.  She asked him if they could meet in the middle at 50 cents, and he was pretty resistant and sounded exceptionally irritated.  I wiggled away with my two new shoe horns while they argued.  I was in awe of this man’s nerve and gusto over a few dollars.  Perhaps I’ll offer someone $5 on a $200 game and see how that goes.

Also, along the way to the big game exchange, there are several other flea/antique markets that we intend to stop off at.  I am hoping to round out some of my personal collection with a few things that I’ve been wanting to pick up, but haven’t been able to find for the price I want.  Here are a few things on my wishlist:

Toejam and Earl: Panic on Funkotron – Sega Genesis
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap – Game Boy Advance
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages – Game Boy Colour
Any SNES RPGs that I haven’t gotten my hands on: Final Fantasy II, Soul Blazer, Breath of Fire II, etc.

If you’d like to see the list of games that my boyfriend and I have collected so far, feel free to check it out on Backloggery.  We are going to keep that list up to date, and it’ll also help us to track our completion progress as we work through our enormous backlog of games.

Enjoy the rest of this frigid day!

-GG

Negotiating No-Nos

Ugh.

I’ve been stuck in this very one-sided negotiation for an awesome lot of games for the past week or so.  I saw the ad go up and answered it within an hour with a few questions about whether or not all the games available were legitimate copies or reproductions.  This is a super exciting game lot since there are some pretty rare NES games in there: Action 52, Bubble Bobble 2, Ducktales 2, Chip and Dale 2, just to name a few.  The woman replied within minutes, telling me that all the games were legitimate copies, and that for an extra $100, we could get over 50 game manuals and boxes for random games.  She sent us some spectacular photos of the manuals and boxes, and there were so many… some matched games that I had loose and some were for games that I didn’t own but eventually planned to.  There were some awesome and rare things in there as well.  All in all, it was well worth the asking price.

We originally agreed to the deal of asking price plus the extra $100 for everything and were trying to work out details about when my boyfriend and I could swing by to pick things up.  The seller is a few hours away from where we live, but I was willing to go the next day if possible so that the deal wouldn’t fall apart for some unforeseeable reason (I will remind you here that this happens to me more often than not, so I’m expertly paranoid.)  The woman we were dealing with didn’t solidify a time or place, but said she’d let me know her availability soon and took the ad down immediately.

I didn’t hear from her the next day, so I wrote her back asking for clarification around pick-up and gave her my phone number so that we could work out the details as soon as possible.  She then proceeded to drop a bomb: she had another buyer who was willing to offer her more by a margin of $100.  I was shocked because I was under the impression that the deal had been made and had been super elated at the prospect of adding these rarities to our library.  I also wondered how anyone else had replied since she had taken the ad down after our first correspondence, but I didn’t want to go on the offensive right away.  I wrote her back expressing my confusion, and asked for clarification on what the next steps were.  She told me that if this new buyer didn’t show up that we could have it.  I was hesitant to start a bidding war since a) the site she posted on is not meant for bidding and doing so goes against the site’s terms and policies, and b) if I hadn’t emailed her to firm up the deal, I might never have known that someone else had supposedly offered her more money than what we had agreed to.  This didn’t sit well with me.  I was starting to wonder about her motives in this deal, and about whether or not there was actually a second buyer at all.  It seemed a little contrived considering that she had only informed me when asked.

So far, I haven’t received any more updates from the seller,  but I’m still remaining hopeful.  I sent her an email this evening simply asking for an update on the status of things since she hadn’t indicated when this apparent other seller was going to pick up the lot.  No reply yet, but dammit, I really want this!  It’s so frustrating trying to deal with someone who is a poor communicator and doesn’t seem to have my interests at heart at all in the matter.  I can’t understand why someone would not be loyal to the person they made a deal with first, especially since I was willing to pay her asking price and drive for several hours on my own dime to pick everything up.  I feel like even if she had received a second offer (again, I’m not sure how she even received it since she took the ad down right after we spoke on the first night), she should’ve told me about it and asked if I could match it, or at least have given me a chance to offer her more from my end.  This whole thing has been shrouded in secrecy and darkness.  If we don’t end up getting this lot, it’ll truly be the one that got away, and I won’t stop thinking about it for a long while.  Sigh.

Anyway, please keep all your relevant appendages crossed so that this might work out in our favour in the end.  My boyfriend and I are planning to start streaming games that we are acquiring on Twitch, so if we can get our hands on these, you can look forward to some rare stuff popping up on our channel of the same name (Hungrygoriya).  If not, my heart will be crushed for a little while.

-GG

Customized SNES

My boyfriend has a knack for making things his own.  He made over the tire rims for his car a few years ago using Plasti-dip, a spray-on product that forms a rubberized coating that can be peeled off at a later date.  It refreshed his car rims and made them match his car.  Conveniently, this product can also  be used on a variety of materials including plastics.  In the interest of science, my boyfriend decided to try his luck at customizing one of our recently acquired SNESes using Plasti-dip, and the results were fabulous.  He chose red and black for ultimate understated coolness.

Just as a sidenote: my boyfriend taped off the panels with the serial number and other important information on the bottom to keep them untarnished.  The parts that are still grey (including the expansion bay door on the bottom) were all separate pieces from the case itself when the system is dismantled, and he didn’t want to risk compromising the functionality of those parts for fashion.

I personally think it looks pretty rad!

Hope you’re enjoying this lovely weekend.

-GG

Flea Market Adventures – Ms. Pac-Man

We travelled to a nearby flea market in search of a corner shelf for our future Nerd Room.  The Nerd Room is a work in progress to showcase our collection and to create a space for gaming and perhaps eventually streaming game play online.  With our recent huge acquisition of games, we definitely need more storage space!  After taking a look around at a few different vendors, we saw it among a pile of Bayou Billy NES cartridges: Ms. Pac-Man.  Even though we just received a huge number of Atari games in a recent lot purchase, Ms. Pac-Man was the one game we really wanted to see and didn’t get.  We picked it up for a hefty $7.50 Canadian.  It was more than I wanted to pay for one cartridge, but at least it’ll put that aspect of collecting to rest.

I’ve heard that this game is significantly better than regular Pac-Man for Atari 2600.  That version of Pac-Man has been said to be the worst incarnation of the famous arcade game to exist on this lovely planet, so I’m happy we won’t have to play the ugly brother exclusively.

Happy Sunday, and thanks for reading!

-GG

The Retro Collection of A.S. – Continued?!

After making another trip to the next town and visiting A.S. again as planned, I only expected to make a brief update here to simply say that he followed through on his promise to give us more PS2 games and the elusive gold Legend of Zelda cartridge for NES.  Instead, I am awestruck by even more surprises that he had up his sleeve for us.  Along with the promised goods, A.S. pulled out a huge bag of – you guessed it – more games!  Conveniently for my personal collecting void, they were all for the SNES.  We received 24 cartridges, another SNES console, one controller, and all the hookups.  I paid him an extra $40, so we’re up to a total cost of $340 Canadian for his entire collection at this point (go here for the backstory of how we chanced upon this literal gamer miracle, and the first round of what we got).  Here’s a photo of what we procured today, minus the console and controller.  I’ve excluded Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas to have a purist Nintendo photo, but we got that as well.

I was Super excited (pardon the pun) about getting Earthworm Jim, Zombies Ate My Neighbours,  Lemmings, Total Carnage and Super Metroid.  I already own copies of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars as well as Illusion of Gaia, but it never hurts to have multiple copies of awesome games.

Picking up and going through this collection has been such a strange and wonderful experience.  There is a part of me that hopes that there are still a few gems left hiding in A.S.’s basement, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see!  I never want this dream to end.

In the meantime, because of our now excessive number of SNES consoles, my boyfriend is going to Plasti-dip one in black and red.  For anyone that just broke a sweat over this kind of modification of the system, it’s not permanent.  Plasti-dip peels right off whenever you grow weary of it without damaging whatever it has been applied to.  Pro-tip: it is an excellent way to spruce up tire rims!  Maybe I’ll post some photos in the near future when it’s finished.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy the rest of your weekend!

-GG

Thrift Store Adventures: PS1 and GBA

Today I went to Value Village, a Canadian thrift store chain, in search of some retro games.  This place is hit and miss depending on who in town has recently emptied out their closet, and whether or not you get there when the stuff goes out into the glass case.  I’ve gotten my hands on some really good finds there in the past, which I might write about at some point.  Anyway, Value Village’s prices have been creeping up and up for the last few years, so it’s really a matter of deciding whether some of the stuff they have is worth the price they’re asking.  They’re normally about 20% cheaper than eBay, which is a bit bothersome to me — they have someone in store searching for competitive rates on their merchandise that gets donated to them.  Yep.  You read that right.  They mark up donated items to be competitive with other sources.  Sigh.  I could go on about why I feel this is a bit ridiculous, but I will let you draw your own conclusions.

I actually had some luck picking up some Playstation 1 titles for okay prices.  I say okay prices because I’m still a bit sour that games cost more than $1 each since I just recently got 190ish games and 16 consoles for $300, but I digress (read here about that magical experience).  I managed to get my hands on Ape Escape, The Legend of Dragoon, Jersey Devil and Tomba 2: The Evil Swine Return for about $60 Canadian total.  All the games are in pretty good condition and came with their manuals.  The only physical problems are with some of the cases: one of the CD compartments in the Dragoon case has damaged teeth making disc 3 a bit of a free spirit, and the front of Ape Escape’s case is cracked.  Other than that, things look pretty good!

After getting home, I did a bit of research on two Game Boy Advance games that were also available: Golden sun and Shining Soul.  For $12, I was hesitant to pick up a loose GBA game unless it had some good reviews.  I was shocked to see the extremely high ratings for Golden Sun, so I went back and picked that up.  I didn’t end up getting Shining Soul.  Based on what I read/watched about the game, it was not well-loved, and was also far along in a game series that I hadn’t even heard of.  It didn’t feel like a good fit for now, so I passed.

I’d say I’ve had a pretty successful day in the game-hunting world!

Thanks for reading!

-GG