The Most Ninfundo You’ll Ever Have

Even though the snow keeps on coming out here in these parts, it seems that people are finally getting into Spring Cleaning Mode and are dusting the cobwebs off of all their old games to sell or purge.  As you likely know by now, I’m not the type to pass up a good deal when I see one, and the good deals are slowly peeking out of the darkness.  I picked up a whole pile of stuff for $120 from a really nice young man just today, and as usual, there were some real winners!

So as not to be accused of misleading anyone with my catchy title, I will include the non-Nintendo games first.  There were three Intellivision games that we were surprised to find since they were not listed in the ad.  I haven’t fired up the old beast in a long while now, so this will give me an excuse to try it out again.

The next bunch of games were for the Game Boy: Super Mario Land, Star Wars, Super Return of the Jedi, and Nemesis.  I didn’t have either of the Star Wars games, and from what I can tell, these are the same titles that were also released on other more “robust” systems.  It’ll be interesting to play those and see if they’re different or truncated from those other versions.  It was also nice to get a nearly pristine copy of Nemesis.  Another copy I already had has a torn label, and I didn’t have the booklet before now.

Though no Game Boy Advance games were included in the game lot, an indigo GBA was in the box along with everything else.  Thankfully there were no batteries left inside.  More often than not I’ve opened up an old handheld to find corroded batteries oozing away behind that battery door.  The screen only has one tiny scratch, but it works!

We also found a few things for the SNES.  In addition to the Game Boy Star Wars games, we also got a copy of Super Star Wars.  I’ve heard that this game is really difficult, but I’m up for the challenge of a hard platformer.  Also included was a second copy of Aladdin with a much nicer label.  Our other copy was pretty mangled.   I only remember renting the Genesis version.  I never had a chance to try out the SNES version of the game, which is apparently entirely different.  The Super Game Boy is also a really excellent thing to have around.  It’s good to have a backup in case something ends up happening to my first one.  You can never have enough Super Game Boys.

There was an N64 game (A Bug’s Life) and a 3rd party N64 controller.  I was really surprised at how convincing the fake N64 controller looked.  It feels really good to hold and the analog stick feels nice and snappy.  I’ll be curious to know if it’s as good in practice as it seems in principle, but I haven’t had a chance to test it yet.  A part of me wants to carve “Nintendo” into that tempting little space up there just to make it all the more convincing.

On the topic of controllers, we also got a few for the NES, and a weird 3rd party monster of sorts for what appears to be the SNES with a tiny screen that I have yet to try.  There is also one of those horrible aftermarket controllers with the cord that comes out of the side instead of the top and has more buttons than it should.  I remember accidentally ordering two controllers very much like this one when I was young and stupid, but unlike this one with what seems to be a 6 foot long cord, the ones I ordered had a cord of about 3 feet in length, if that. They’re ridiculously short and feel like they might explode if you hold them too hard.  I still have them as a reminder to read ads thoroughly before buying!  We also got an NES zapper, but I didn’t show it here because I’m horrible and forgot to include it in the photo.  Also, I’m also not too sure where this circuit board overlay sticker came from.  Anyone know?

Since you’re seeing NES controllers, you must be wondering: are there any NES games?  The answer to that would be yes.  We got 13 NES games in total, and the first one, Bigfoot, we got with its box.  I tested this one out awhile ago and despite it seeming like a cool monster truck game, what little I played of it had me being a monster truck, but I was racing another monster truck instead of smashing things with my giantness.  Maybe there is more to it than a short test might reveal, but that has yet to be seen.

The other games were all loose, and only one came with its manual.  There are lots of sports games here and some we already have, but the price of the lot was worth it for the games on the right side of the photo alone.  I’ve been pretty desperate to find a copy of Maniac Mansion for a decent price, and thankfully that’s the one that came with its manual!  I’m not sure how different the game is from its PC counterpart, but I’m curious to try it out.  It was also nice to find the Zeldas and a copy of Final Fantasy that I’ll be able to give away to a friend of mine or trade at a game swap.  I was intially really excited to find Tale Spin, though I’m not sure if it’s the game I thought I remembered from childhood.  Popping it in for a test didn’t jog my memory like I thought it would, so there’s some elusive fleeting childhood memory floating around in my brain that I thought was Tale Spin but is actually another game.  I’ll find it some day!

The last thing we got in the $120 lot was a Retro Duo machine that plays NES and SNES games.  I’m curious to know if the S-video signal coming out of it will be any better than my original hardware that only outputs in composite.  I’ve never had this kind of machine before so I’m interested to see how it’ll perform versus the real deal.  I hope it doesn’t eat games for breakfast or something sinister like that.

Apart from the lot mentioned above, I’ve been doing a bit of online shopping as well.  Since finding a few Famicom games a few posts ago, I’ve had a bit of a fire lit to find some Famicom exclusives that are native English speaker-friendly.  I found a short list of some interesting ones and ordered them from Japan.  The most expensive game by far of this lot was Holy Diver which I paid over $100 for, but the rest were between $10-30.  After barely spending any money on games for months, I thought I could afford to splurge a little bit.

Akumajo Special: Boku Dracula-kun (Kid Dracula, top left) is my my substitute for the Game Boy version of Kid Dracula that I’ll likely never buy for its current asking price.  I’ve heard that the Famicom version of the game is really well done and accomplishes much of what the Game Boy game does, but with a little more controversy.  Apparently some sprites were deemed unfriendly for North American audiences, which is why it wasn’t localized.  Too bad… it has mostly to do with a hooded figure in white with a manji on its costume.  There was a manji dungeon in the Legend of Zelda and that sure didn’t stop that from being localized, but I digress…

I fell in love with Yume Penguin Monogatari (top right) when I watched a video on Penta the penguin and saw some gameplay from it.  I first encountered Penta in Antarctic Adventure on my 72-in-1 Cartridge Story pirate cart from childhood and used to sing Skater’s Waltz at the top of my lungs while shuffling around pits and avoiding seals.  This Famicom game takes Penta and throws him into a unique adventure where his girlfriend has left him because he has become overweight and won’t get back together with him until he slims down.  Seems like a silly premise, but the game’s bad guy literally has his thugs throwing food at you to keep you overweight, and it makes me laugh.  It’s a fun platformer that I think everyone would probably enjoy.

Valkyrie no Bouken: Toki no Kagi Densetsu (bottom right) is an 8-bit RPG that has virtually no text at all.  All the information you need about items and how to use them is in the manual, which has thankfully been translated.  It’s a wander-fest, and its lack of Japanese text was the appeal to me.  This was the cheapest of the four.

Holy Diver (bottom left) is supposed to be very much like Castlevania in gameplay style and aesthetic, and from what I’ve read and seen of it, I love it already without having played too much of it.  It has the protagonist casting spells and being generally badass, so I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.  I’ve also had the song Holy Diver stuck in my head for weeks since I first learned of the game.  You’re welcome.

Last but not least, I paid a visit to a friend of mine that owns a game store recently and picked up a few more NES games.  I had been looking for the remaining two Dragon Warrior games I was missing and found them at the shop.  Dragon Warrior II was sitting there with a price tag of $50, and when I showed some interest in that, my friend told me he had a boxed copy of DWIII hanging around too if I wanted it.  It was boxed with its manual but was missing the map and monster information, and he had a nasty price tag of $175 on there.  I had brought in a bag of trades, comprised mostly of extra copies of PS1 Final Fantasy games.  We ended up doing a straight trade for everything after I complained about a peeling label, the generally meh condition of the manual, and some box troubles.  He was quite happy to have both of the games going to a good home.  Here’s a photo of the two Dragon Warrior games I picked up.

With those, I finally have the entire NES Dragon Warrior bunch!  I have probably mentioned it before, but a few summers ago I was looking through classifieds ads and there was a person selling all four games for $150.  I was 15 minutes late phoning the owner of the ad and the games were already sold.  I’ve thought about that bitterly for the past few years as I’ve seen the prices for these games go higher and higher, and thankfully now I can stop thinking about it.  In all its current glory, here is my whole little Dragon Warrior NES collection!

I was really happy to find all these awesome games, and with great Nintendo power comes great responsibility – I have to catalogue and play everything!

I hope you’re all well and that you have some exciting gaming plans for the weekend.  I’ll leave it to CheapBossAttack to probe everyone about what they’ll be playing this weekend in his Freakin’ Weekend post, but I will send out well-wishes to you all.

Thanks for reading.

-GG

My First Time: First Person Shooters

You may know me as a person who exclusively plays RPGs and owns way too many of them to ever possibly get through them all, but there is also a large portion of my collection that has gone virtually untouched for my entire life: first person shooters.  Though most of those types of games have made their way onto my shelves when I’ve purchased larger game lots, I’ve always been anti-FPS because I don’t particularly like excessive person vs. person violence and gore, or the glorification of war through gaming.  I was recently challenged by a friend on Twitch to try out GoldenEye 007 for the N64, and after a bit of teasing and egging on from other people, I hesitantly accepted the request.

(The other important part of this that I feel is important to mention is that not only had I never played an FPS prior to last night, I had also never seen any James Bond movies.  I actually thought that Mission Impossible and James Bond movies were the same thing, so that’s saying something horrible.  If you asked me, I still wouldn’t be able to definitively tell you the difference between the two, so it’s probably best you don’t ask!)

I read the manual and got a synopsis of James Bond lore from my boyfriend before starting the stream.  At first, the entire idea of learning a new-to-me game genre in front of other humans seemed really daunting and made me feel vulnerable and embarrassed every time I made a mistake, but I was soon propped up by positive comments and great advice from the people who joined me in my stream’s chat.  Though I kept shooting doors instead of opening them and have absolutely no stealth skills for this kind of gameplay, I was soon running and gunning my way through the world of James Bond with gusto, and I was honestly having a lot of fun.  I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard on stream, and feeling silly was the furthest thing from my mind by the end of it all.  I’m really glad that I had a friendly push outside of my comfort zone and had the opportunity to share it with people who were genuinely entertained by my shenanigans.

If you’re interested, you can see a highlight reel of sorts from my 3 hour stream.  I’ve cut and edited the video.

I think I didn’t mind this game’s violence too much because a) the graphics are really unrealistic, and b) there wasn’t a lot of blood.  I think I’ll definitely wrap this game up sometime in the near future.  Heck… I might even try something a little more modern just for kicks!

Do you guys have a default genre that you go to more than others?  Have you ever felt apprehensive about trying something new?  I’d also love to hear about your first time with this game if you’ve played it.

Thanks for reading!

-GG

So Much Paper! Guides, Guides, Guides.

An update: Mega Man V for Game Boy is gone. I went into the thrift store the other day to check up on it, and the price had been reduced to $79.99 + tax down from $114.99.  It was still way too expensive for me to buy, even if it is rare and a cool game and was reduced to about half of what it’d normally go for on eBay.  A part of me knew I wouldn’t see it again when I left that day, but I hoped anyway.  On some level, I wish I had been bold enough to buy it for that price, but another part of me hates parting with my money for the sake of greedy companies.  I know I complain about this a lot lately, but as someone who really enjoys game hunting in a small town, it’s hard to see the hobby becoming more expensive than it already is.

Goodbye Mega Man V.  May I someday find another copy of you as beautiful as you were.

Anyway, on the bright side, I did find some game guides!  Like all the other prices at that store, the price of guides is also increasing.  I can remember in recent past when game guides were only $3.99.  They later selectively pushed up the price to $5.99 if they were for really “good” games (also known as anything Zelda/Mario).  $5.99 feels pretty steep for that sort of thing, and I was shocked (but not really surprised) to find that some of these game guides were now $7.99 a piece!  There were about 20 of them there, and about half of them I couldn’t bear to leave without.  I am, after all, a sucker for RPGs.

The first guides I picked out were for Tales of Symphonia and Wario World for GameCube.  I had to phone my boyfriend because I could’ve sworn I already had the Tales of Symphonia guide, but it turned out that my memory was serving me half-correctly: we had the Tales of Symphonia art book!  I think I regularly get Tales of Symphonia confused in my head with Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles which further complicates matters, but thankfully it all got straightened out.

Next up were some great RPG guides for a few Playstation games: Grandia, and Dark Cloud 2.  Now some of you may know to what large extent I dislike the first Dark Cloud, but I’ve heard Dark Cloud 2’s praises sung all over the internet.  I found the game last year and was excited to see the guide pop up for the taking.  Grandia is another grandiose adventure I can’t wait to undertake some day if I ever finish Ultima IV…

The next two guides were for Final Fantasy Anthology and Final Fantasy Origins for PS1.  I’ve owned these games since I was in my teens and rounded out my collection of other Final Fantasy PS1 remake books when I bought my friend’s game collection last year.  These two I actually went back for the next day after asking around to see if they were worth picking up, and in hindsight, it should’ve been a no-brainer, especially for FFII and FFV!  Thankfully they were still there when I arrived.  Of all the manuals I bought, these were in the worst shape of all.  The Anthology manual is missing a little bite out of its back cover and shows a lot of wear as well, but no pages are missing.  Final Fantasy V has been on my list for a long time, and I’m looking forward to the challenge.

Last but not least, I stumbled upon some Suikoden manuals for Suikoden II, IV and V.  I don’t own the fifth game, but I do have the other two.  I’ve learned today that the Suikoden II manual is quite rare and valuable, and for the price I paid, I suppose it was a pretty good deal.  I was also told that the manual apparently runs players through the beta version of the game, but I wouldn’t know better one way or another since I haven’t played it yet.  Either way, I’m glad to have it!  These manuals were all in really good shape and had the previous owner’s notes still inside on loose papers.  You can see them sticking out of the Suikoden II and Suikoden V books.

Though I don’t normally buy so much paper in one swoop, I can never say no to a good game guide!  Finding these books has reignited my excitement to play through these games.  Work will die down in the next little while and I’ll finally have more time to get back to doing what I love: game collecting, streaming, and LPing!  Since my last post, I’ve really been into Famicom games since picking up Duck Tales and Rockman 3.  Stay tuned for some stuff I ordered off of eBay to make its way here.  I’m trying to find some Japan exclusives that are easy on the English-speaking!

Hope you’re all having an excellent weekend.  Thanks for reading!

-GG

The Springtime Shuffle

I can honestly say that this has been one of the slowest winters for game collecting I’ve ever experienced.  With the exception of a few things wiggling into my possession by chance, I’ve mostly been shopping online or at game stores.  In my downtime, I’ve had some time to work on other projects like Let’s Plays and other videos I’ve been wanting to put together over on my YouTube channel, but for the most part, things out my way have been pretty quiet.

The first thing I picked up was Sonic the Hedgehog for Game Gear.  Before buying this Sonic game, my boyfriend only owned the second one.  This was at the thrift store for $3, so it was not a tough sell.

I also recently discovered some RPGs for the Game Gear, and according to some ancient forums I stumbled across, some are better than others to try out.  I picked up Defenders of Oasis and Crystal Warriors for a total of $50.  There are some other Game Gear games I’d like to pick up too, but the one I’d like most is Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya.  I’d also absolutely love to play Sylvan Tale, but it was a Japan exclusive.  After watching some gameplay I’ve been pining after that one pretty hard, I’m going to have to find a way to play a translated version.  It looks too cute and awesome to pass up.

Another game I bought was Athena for NES.  I heard about the game in a video somewhere and was pleased with how much the game visually reminded me of Alex Kidd.  I haven’t made it too far yet, mostly because I have been having a difficult time getting the cartridge to work!  It is one of the finickiest games I own and will only start up once out of 30 tries or so.  I’ve cleaned it and opened it up to inspect it and everything looks fine, so I’m not too sure what the issue is.

Staying on the NES track, I picked up a long-sought-after game.  Ghost Lion was available at a game store with its box, manual and poster.  I had first tried this game out years ago on the DS using an R4 card, and I played it for quite some time.  At some point I had stupidly overwritten my save state and gave up, but the game was stuck in my head.  I decided to bite the bullet at my friend’s store and I paid about $140 for the game in its pristine condition.  It might seem like a lot, but because I’ve barely bought anything all winter, I wasn’t too upset about paying it and supporting a friend.  This game is in the best condition of any boxed game I own for the NES.  I almost hate putting the cartridge into the console because the game’s sticker is literally perfect.  It’s a good thing I collect to play.  Games were meant to be played!

Although I don’t run across Famicom games in the wild very often, I did find two in a thrift store recently and bought both for $20 total.  The games were Duck Tales and Rockman 3 (aka Mega Man 3).  I didn’t have a North American version of Duck Tales, so I was pretty happy to find that one.  Thankfully there’s not a lot of story and reading required to play, and some of the main assets on the game screen are in English!  I think I would’ve normally passed on Rockman 3 since I already own it for NES, but for $20 combined, who could really complain?

This also encouraged my boyfriend to fix our game converter that allows us to play Famicom games on the NES.  We bought it a long while ago and it has never worked.  He took it apart and diagnosed it using a continuity test.  It turned out that there were 8 broken traces.  With his ever-improving soldering skills, he rigged up some jumpers and got it working without much trouble.  Needless to say, I can now enjoy these games!

Here’s a photo of some of the broken traces pre-fix.  My boyfriend removed the silk screening to repair them.  Though the breaks were not always explicitly visible (most obvious is the leftmost one), the continuity test revealed the issues.

Moving into 16-bit territory now, I also picked up a copy of Equinox for the SNES.  This is the sequel to Solstice, a puzzle game for NES that I’ve played a bit with a friend.  To be quite honest, I had mistaken this game for an RPG based on its label sticker, but I am happy with the purchase regardless.  This game is highly praised for fun gameplay and great music.  It’ll be a nice break from RPGs when I get around to it.  This game also came from the game store for $25.

Just a few days ago, I finally decided to answer a classifieds ad that had been up for about a month.  There was a person selling a bunch of random games and gaming-related items like the Intellivoice module, which we already have.  I did see a Pokemon Gold Game Boy in the mix along with a few Game Boy games, so I messaged the seller and we agreed on a time to meet.  With my boyfriend along for the ride as usual, we ended up getting the Game Boy, a GB game called Kwirk that I hadn’t heard of before and a Colecovision game called Miner 2049er.  At a quick glance, I couldn’t tell if Miner 2049er was for Atari or not, so I gambled and lost: turns out it’s for Colecovision, and we don’t have a Coleco console at the moment.  The Game Boy was also missing its battery back, but it’s in great working condition minus a few scratches on the screen. We got everything in the photo below for $10.

Kwirk has also turned out to be a pleasant little puzzle game.  The music in it is pretty great and I’m constantly impressed by music I’m discovering for Game Boy games.  I uploaded some music from Faceball 2000 recently and I can’t quite get enough of that song.  I might have to add some Kwirk music to that playlist since there are currently only two songs in there.  There needs to be more!

The other thing I was hoping to get my hands on was a copy of Mega Man V for Game Boy.  I saw that pop up at the thrift store last week, but I was shocked and mostly appalled at the staggering price tag of $114.99 for the cartridge alone.  Where I live in Canada, there’s a 13% sales tax, so all in, the game would be close to $130 Canadian all said and done.  That’s ludicrous for a game being sold at a thrift store, especially since the store pays for their donations by weight.  I think we all know that a Game Boy game doesn’t come anywhere near that price because of its enormity.  People there have been getting greedier and greedier.

A picture of the game being held captive in the showcase.

After whining to a few store employees about the skyrocketing prices on games, someone handed me a Friends and Family discount flyer which allows for discounts on store items.  Video games have a 50% discount so I’m going to try my luck and see how things pan out when the sale rolls around.  I’m still not sure I even want to buy it at half off if the greed is running so rampant in that store, but I’ll see how I feel at that point if it’s even still there.  I’d mostly be buying it to play it for myself and then maybe sell it or trade it for something else.  We’ll see!

Here’s hoping that more games will start finding their way into my hands soon!  There are a few swaps lined up for April and May, so I plan to get out to those.  Yard sale-ing should also start up as soon as the rest of this snow melts, but the defrosting has been slow-going this Spring.  Anyway, I hope you’ve all been having a pleasant weekend!

Thanks for reading!

-GG

 

Secret Valentine: Elle from The Road to Elle

Firstly, thank you to Ian from Adventure Rules for initiating another wonderful community event, encouraging folks to come together and share and discuss common interests, or in this case, downright appreciate others openly!

Secondly, happy Valentine’s Day!  I hope that you’re all feeling loved today.  Now, onto my secret valentine!

I was pleased to broaden my horizons beyond gaming and take a look at the blog called The Road to Elle, and the wonderful person behind it: Elle.  Though I had never interacted with Elle’s writing previous to this endeavour, I was quickly swept into candid accounts of day-to-day activities and wonderful bits of poetry, interspersed with book reviews and a little bit of everything else.  She is also a book-reading machine, which is something I really admire and wish I had more time to do in my own life.  I’ve read a total of half a book this year (I’m actually cheating, I really started it last year in December).  There are certainly some interesting books she has mentioned and discussed that I’m adding to my list of books I’d eventually like to seek out.

What I loved about reading Elle’s blog is her clear passion to write.  She just recently finished up a novel five years in the making back in November, and her excitement in that post was palpable.  She seems to be constantly striving to reflect and expand in the work she is doing, and as a result, continues to improve along the way.  I especially loved reading poems written from different prompts, i.e. write a poem about an empty room or a lie.  These spontaneous challenges were interesting to read and gave me some perspective on topics and situations I would’ve taken an entirely different direction in if I was at all good at stringing ideas together in a prose-like fashion.

It’s also really obvious that Elle really cares about her family.  Her posts are dotted with references to her children, her husband and her talented artist mother.  It was fun reading about her daughter learning to cook some new things, as well as some chronicles of local events that she has attended with family.  It’s really refreshing to read about people simply being people!

Elle from The Road to Elle is a talented writer with an enthusiasm that extends beyond your average blogger.  I’m truly looking forward to keeping up with her adventures!

Thanks for reading!

-GG

Some Humble Acquisitions

In my winter downtime from game hunting, I’ve been working on other projects like streaming, creating reviews for my YT channel, and getting back into the swing of making some Super Mario Maker music levels.  Here and there though, I’ve stumbled upon a few new games that I wanted to share with you all.  In some exciting news, there is word of a winter swap next month that we might try to get out to if the weather is good, but who can tell with these unpredictable Canadian winters?  Time will tell, but my little list of games I’m interested in is growing again and I’ve got an itch to scratch!

The first set of games I picked up were for the Wii, and I found those locally in a classifieds ad.  When I first saw the posting I probably smiled far too wide because Grey’s Anatomy was in the mix.  A number of months ago I was looking for some good Wii games and came across a review or a gameplay video from the Grey’s Anatomy game, and I was in tears laughing at how weirdly intriguing it all seemed to me.  I was really into Grey’s when it first debuted, so this was a game I had been waiting to find.  It was a steal at $5 since I got the whole pile of games for $30.  The other steal in the bunch was Rune Factory Frontier.  As some of you may recall, I recently played through Harvest Moon 64.  Rune Factory is supposed to be all of the things I love about Harvest Moon but with the addition of RPG elements.  Marrying two of my favourite things together can’t be a bad thing, right?  The only issue is that the disc seems pretty scratched, and I’ve been boycotting the hock shop that does disc resurfacing because they’re a bunch of greedy jerks, but it’s looking like I might need to saunter over there sometime.  I don’t know if it’ll play otherwise.

I feel like I got some shovelware with this purchase, but hopefully there’s something worthwhile in those other four titles.  I’ve always wanted a Wii Degree after all!

I was also happy to receive two NES games I ordered in the mail: Ninja Kid and Dragon Spirit: The New Legend.  Though I’m really, really bad at shmups, I was interested in Dragon Spirit because of the story and the potential for it to be a new mash-up of great gameplay for me.  After finishing SpellCaster for the SMS last year, I’m trying to be more open-minded since that game was quite enjoyable despite being in large part genres I tend to stay away from.  Ninja Kid is also something I thought might be fun to try out.

I also stumbled upon a few doubles of GBA games I already own at an okay price at the thrift store this week, and those are Golden Sun, Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Pokemon Ruby.  I often pick up cheaper games for the purposes of trading or to pass along to friends.  The thrift store has been barren for a long time now, so it was a nice surprise to find these.

Also, I found something at the thrift store that I don’t see very often: some big box PC games.  My boyfriend has a pretty substantial PC game collection and these were two that I couldn’t pass up on.  Though I can’t see myself playing any of the Leisure Suit Larry games, the Collector’s Edition was in excellent shape and it looked pretty complete.  I couldn’t remember seeing it on the shelf in the house so I went for it, and my boyfriend was pretty excited when I brought it home.  The other PC game I ran across was Bioforge, a game I had previously never heard of but bit the bullet on because it was a good price.  After getting it home, I learned that it was reviewed very positively.  I can see myself trying out Bioforge.  The story sounds like it’s right up my alley!  Anyone play that one?

There were a few things I passed up on lately and have regrets about.  Apart from a bunch of cheap doubles I could’ve snagged for $30, there was an ad online for Ghost Lion (with its manual), Toxic Crusaders, Gargoyle’s Quest 2 and Pirates! for NES, but the seller wanted $280 for everything.  I offered $220 and was shot down pretty hard and the ad disappeared a short time later.  All of those games are uncommon, so I feel like I missed out, but I keep reminding myself that they’ll come around again someday.  Hopefully.  I also really want to find copies of The Uninvited and Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom one of these days too.  There’s still so much I’d like to find for NES!

I am cautiously optimistic that we might find some more good stuff soon.  Since this blog goes a little quiet over the winter months, perhaps you’d like to check me out over on Youtube sometime.  I do the occasional Let’s Play or video review over there and have been pouring my heart out into making some good Super Mario Maker music levels which will be releasing on Thursdays for the next half a year or so at the rate I’m going.

I hope you’ve all been keeping warm this winter.  It’s been one of the coldest I can recall in recent years, so I’m anxious for Spring!

Thanks for reading!

-GG

 

The Unique Blogger Award – An Honour

I’m always so flattered to hear of someone appreciating me or the content I put out here on the blog, so I wanted to extend a big, heartfelt thank you to NekoJonez for the nomination for this award for being a Unique Blogger!  Though I’m sure most of you have been over to his blog by now, you should go there again!  There’s a wealth of great, informative content on games of all kinds, as well as some how-tos about collecting and keeping things organized.  Right up my alley!  You can read his wonderful Unique Blogger award post here.  His nominees are also excellent folks, so you should check them out as well.

On with the award!  Here are the rules:

1. Display the award. (See above).
2. Thank the individual(s) who have nominated you and include a link to their blog. A little promotion for their blog is also welcome.
3. Answer the questions asked by the individual who has nominated you.
4. Nominate an arbitrary number of bloggers and have them answer three questions you put forth to them.

Here are the questions that NekoJonez put forward to his nominees:

If you were able to erase all memories from one game to be able to fully experience it again, which game would it be and why?

This would definitely be Undertale.  I played that one a few years ago and felt things I’ve never felt before while playing a game.  Since I like story-driven RPGs quite a bit, I’ve always found myself gravitating and sympathizing with the protagonist first and foremost, but Undertale had me battling feelings of sadness, guilt and regret toward NPCs.  It was a big shift for me, and truly a unique gaming experience I haven’t replicated since.

If you were allowed to help in the production of a game, which role would you take on and why? The role of producer, voice actor, writer, designer…?

If I had to choose, I think I would like to be a voice actor.  I’m a pretty shy person in the flesh and am often left out in social situations since I hate being the center of attention, so to be able to lend a voice in an impersonal way would be a dream come true for me.  I don’t know if I have the voice for it, since along with the shyness comes a bit of soft-spokenness.

What is one of the earliest video game memories?

I have been gaming since I was 4 when my family brought home the NES.  I used to play a fair bit of Super Mario Bros., and the earliest memory I have is passing the controller to my dad and him walking into the first goomba in World 1-1, which was the first and last time we ever played a game together.  We also had a really old computer that used to have a pinball game on it, and I also used to fiddle around with a Sherlock Holmes text-based game way back as well.  I didn’t know what that game was for many years but finally found it last year.  It’s called Sherlock Holmes: Riddle of the Crown Jewels.  Our Vic20 also brought me a lot of great early gaming memories.  I used to really love playing Choplifter.

I suppose it’s time for me to nominate some great folks for this award.  I’m allowed to choose an arbitrary number, so I’ll highlight four here, though there are many others I’d like to choose!  I will open up my nominations to anyone I follow here.  If I follow you, you’re unique enough to entertain me and keep me interested, so if you find my questions interesting, please feel free to answer them yourself!

Jeff NinjaFox – a fellow collector and retrogamer, but someone who also has a love for new games (and foxes!)  I love reading about his collecting escapades.

Nostalgia Trigger – a gamer that has resolved to stop buying games for 2018, but has a tremendous backlog of games to play through and talk about (looking forward to this very much!)

Sega Dude – another fellow collector who has an impressive bunch of games, and often offers up some great opinions on games he has played.  He also has a YouTube page that I’ve just discovered… you should definitely check out his videos.

EsperDreams – a wonderful collector and gamer who has a review blog, but also streams some fun and unique games on Twitch (she just reached 100 followers there, a well-deserved milestone for an entertaining gamer)

Some questions for you fine folks:

1. Which video game character do you most relate to, whether for their backstory or their personality?
2. What’s one game that you own that you don’t think you want to play?  Why?
3. What is one game that you wish you owned?  Why don’t you own it?

Before I go, a gigantic thank you again to NekoJonez for the nomination.  I’ve said it here many times before, but it’s truly an honour to be a part of such a wonderful and supportive community of like-minded individuals.  Thank you for letting me share my quirky adventures with you.

Thanks for reading!

-GG

Some Questions about The Last Jedi

The following are a list of questions I had after watching Star Wars: The Last Jedi.  Please don’t read them if you don’t want anything spoiled about the movie!

 

 

 

Spoilers ahead!

 

 

 

About Luke:

1. Why did Luke leave a map if he never intended to be found?
2. Since when can Jedi make live-action holograms of themselves in distant places, and how did Luke learn to do that?
3. If hologram fighting was possible all along, why didn’t all Jedi just fight as holograms all the time? Obi-Wan would still be with us.
4. Why didn’t Luke’s metal hand stay behind when he disappeared?
5. Why did Luke teleporting himself result in his death?
6. If Jedi can see all aspects of the future, why didn’t Luke see that his actions would be the impetus for the turning of Kylo Ren and stop himself from doubting him in the first place?
7. Why did Luke get so crotchety and detached when his original story’s driving force was hope and seeing the good in others?
8. How did Luke find an island with a dark side pit, and what was its former purpose?
9. Why was The Mirror of Erised in the dark side pit?
10. Why did Luke get upset about the Jedi texts being burned when he would’ve known that Rey took them?

About other characters and plot points:

1. How did Leia learn to survive the vacuum of space?
2. Was the bird meat Chewie was eating a cooked porg, in front of a bunch of other porgs?
3. If so, was the sadness shown by the porgs because Chewie was eating their friend, or were they wanting in on a little cannibalism?
4. Why didn’t Finn melt?
5. In the final confrontation, weren’t Finn and Rose’s ships attached in the beginning?
6. Why was Rose saved after she essentially became a traitor?  She sentenced the remaining rebels to death by interfering with Finn’s kamikaze mission.  Moreover, since when does love trump duty?
7. How did Rose learn to fly a ship? I thought she was a maintenance worker.
8. Why didn’t Holdo tell the crew what her plans were instead of keeping them secret?
9. In light of Holdo turning the rebel ship into a lightspeed rocket, why don’t they just start strapping lightspeed engines to random asteroids and ramming those into things?
10. Why did Captain Phasma fall down a second pit? You think she’d be watching out for those after the last time.
11. How did those ice foxes even fit through that small hole in the rocks?
12. How did a death star-like laser only put a tiny hole in a giant door rather than blowing up the entire mountain?

 

If you have any answers to these questions or some of your own, I’d love to hear them.

Thanks for reading!

-GG

Year-End Game Beatings

This post may seem a bit early for an end-of-year reflection, but I’ll be out of town for a few weeks and likely won’t have too much time to sit down and write closer to the new year.  I apologize in advance for all the blog-citement I’m going to be missing while I’m away.  I’ll do my best to keep up with all your wonderful posts.

Over the past (almost) two years on this blog, I’ve been captivated by how organized all you folks are.  You keep track of which games you’ve played as well as when you start and finish them.  You make goals on what you’re going to accomplish, and formulate a plausible timeline to complete things in.  These, along with other little pieces of data got me thinking: I’m unorganized!  Sure, with the blog I have a running list of games I’ve bought and an inventory to match in various places, but I’ve often felt a little sheepish when looking at people’s yearly “completed games” lists.  I’m a slow gamer.  I don’t often break 10 games per year at the rate I go, but I take my time playing games for several reasons.

1. I have a full time job, and it’s a job that often comes home with me at night and on weekends.  It’s simply hard to make time to play as much as I’d like.
2. I love the stories of games I play so much that I hate finishing them.  Once they’re finished, it means they’re over, usually forever.
3. I get overwhelmed with what to play next sometimes.  There are so many things I want to play and I get all bent out of shape trying to choose something.  I guess having too much choice is a good problem to have.

Number 3 was why I embarked on the Sega Master System RPG quest at the end of 2016, to help focus my gaming a bit.  I’ve made some progress through it but am nowhere near having completed it by now, which I’m totally fine with.  Hopefully 2018 will bring many more good times with my Master System, as well as a variety of other consoles and their wonderful games.

In the meantime, in my slight attempt to get organized at the beginning of 2017, I started keeping track of the games I’ve finished in my “Game Beatings” spreadsheet.  These are games I finished either for the first time or for the millionth time, but I threw them all in a list to share with you all.  Here they are, roughly grouped by console:

The Legend of Zelda
Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. 2
Super Mario Bros. 3
Master of Darkness
Miracle Warriors (1st time)
Phantasy Star (1st time)
Psychic World (1st time)
SpellCaster (1st time)
Ys: The Vanished Omens (1st time)
Stackhead Iario (my glitched version of SMB1)
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Kirby’s Dreamland
Super Mario Land
Pitfall II (1st time)
Harvest Moon 64 (1st time)
The Impossible Game

It may not seem particularly impressive, but it’s my little list of completed games, a grand total of 16 (I’ve counted SMB1 and Stackhead Iario as one since they are the same game).  I also played mostly through Wonderboy in Monster Land, Wonderboy in Shinobi World, and Dragon Crystal.  I might work on finishing them in the new year now that my rage towards them has dwindled substantially, but as of now, they remain incomplete.  There are others I could mention here as partially completed, but I’ve felt like my brain has been on fire for a number of days now.  Nothing else is coming to me for the moment.

I don’t really have big goals for 2018 except to continue playing through the games I’ve collected, and find some more time to make new Let’s Plays and do some video reviews for fun.  I’m definitely going to create a second column in my “Game Beatings” spreadsheet for 2018, so perhaps I’ll surprise myself with a more robust accomplished list in about 365 days from now.

What did you guys play in 2017?  What was your favourite new/old game you played?  My favourites by far were Harvest Moon, Miracle Warriors and Pitfall II.  I am going to have the Pitfall II music stuck in my head for a while after re-listening to it.

Thank you all very much for reading.  It has been a bunch of fun being on this wonderful adventure with you all.  All the best in the holiday season!

-GG

Nintendo Goodies

It has been some time since I’ve been able to find anything even remotely interesting at a thrift store, but that all changed the other day. After coming up empty for months, I found a few NES games huddled together in the glass case, and I could’ve sworn they had my name on them!

I found three NES games there: Gauntlet, Gauntlet II, and Shadowgate.  Though I was happy to see some retro games in the wild, I was particularly unimpressed with the pricing of each game: $20!  I couldn’t believe it.  Checking into these games online showed prices ranging anywhere from $10-$20, and the price tag of $20 per game was certainly closer to the high end by far.  In the past, the local thrift store has usually leaned toward the lower end of the pricing, especially for cartridge-only items.  I luckily had a 25% off coupon or else those games could’ve stayed right where they were for all I cared, but I did end up buying them in the end with the discount.  I’m honestly feeling really discouraged about this particular store, as well as others in my area.  Over the last year or so, the last few havens of where I felt I could find fairly priced games are starting to get greedy, which means that I’m likely going to stop shopping there sooner than later.  How can I continue a collecting blog when I won’t be able to buy games in town anymore?!  Bah.  Either way, for the time being, here is a photo of the three games!

Gauntlet is the Tengen release, and I don’t have a lot of unofficial NES games save a handful.  I’ve heard that there is absolutely no difference between the Tengen version and the official release in terms of gameplay or content – even the cartridge art is identical.  Shadowgate and Gauntlet II were in lovely shape and literally look like they’ve never been inserted into an NES.  I honestly wonder how people end up dumping things in this condition off at a thrift store in the first place.  I wish I could somehow draw people in to give me their games instead of sending them off to these greedy stores!

I answered a classifieds ad recently that was an absolute steal.  Someone was selling Soul Blazer for SNES, and though I had a copy of that one already, I bought a second copy to put in the mail for my cousin.  I took a photo of mine and his copy together since I barely ever see this game out and about, and it’s unlikely I’ll ever see two copies together again!

The same person put up another ad a few days later for 8 SNES games, and though I had all of them already bit Pilotwings, I couldn’t help myself.  There were some absolutely great games in there, and I like to buy up well-priced games to use for trades at swaps.  Here’s a photo of all the games I picked up with my very favourite Pusheen mermaid.  The guy even threw in an SNES Game Genie.  I picked up all these games for $200, which is a very, very excellent deal.  The games are:

Donkey Kong Country
Donkey Kong Country 2
Actraiser 2
Pilotwings
Super Metroid
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
Secret of Mana
Super Mario RPG

I really lucked out buying these since many of the new-to-me cartridges were in better condition than the copies of the games I had already.  Worn/torn labels, sticker goo, un-removable security labels/stickers, etc. are all things I wish a lot of my games didn’t have on them.  These labels were in particularly excellent shape!  In the photo below, my previous copies are on the left, and the newly purchased copies are on the right.  The sun totally interfered with my photo here, but I promise that new Yoshi’s Island is lovelier than old Yoshi’s Island.

I was pretty excited to finally get a different copy of Yoshi’s Island because the copy I bought with my SNES when I was 17 had always been really finicky.  It would take a lot of wiggling and praying to get that one working, and wouldn’t you know?  The new copy is even worse!  I started wondering if this particular game just has issues, but I think it’s just my luck to come across that game for the second time in my life only to have it perform less well than my ill-performing first copy.  Ugh.  Even with the addition of some extra solder on the PCB contacts to increase the contact area in the console slot didn’t seem to help much.  I’m just going to go with the fact that it isn’t meant to be.  On the bright side though, I did swap the front covers.  That green crayon scrawl is now out of sight!  I’ll be excited for spring/summer swap season to roll around so I can see what trades lie on the horizon.  Maybe Harvest Moon for SNES?  Who can say for sure?!

Lastly, I found another SNES game at a store out of town: Dragon View!  It wasn’t a game I had even heard of before glancing upon it in the store, and I hummed and hawed a whole bunch before finally taking it home with me.  I’m glad I did because it’s apparently an uncommon game that is pretty good according to some reviews I read.  It’s the sequel to the reviled Drakkhen, but Dragon View apparently fixed all the problems that Drakkhen brought to the table and added a whole bunch of new awesome stuff.  The opening sequence and title screen both look amazing, and loading up an old save file on the cartridge had me bopping my head along to some awesome-sounding tunes!  I’m pretty excited to try this one out and maybe even review it down the road.  There doesn’t seem to be too much out there on this particular game.

Well, this might be one of my last posts for a while.  Things are looking awfully sparse out there in the game collecting world, and with more and more stores around here getting greedy, I’m not sure how much more luck I’ll be able to have locally in the next few weeks/months.  I will try to think up some cool other stuff to post in the meantime though.  I love this blog and all you folks out there, so hopefully I can showcase a few things I had hanging around pre-blog, among other things.  Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading!  I hope you’re all having a wonderful week.

-GG