Hungry Goriya Used Acquire: Playstation 2 and 3

This is the second post in a series called “Hungry Goriya Used Acquire” that serves to highlight the contents of a large game collection I procured from an old high school friend of mine, Joe.  Read here for the backstory.

Thought I’d go about this chronicling in chronological order, did you?  Me too, actually, until I realized that I love retro stuff a ton, and that all the best stuff would have passed early on as I got into the uncharted territories of PS3 and XBox 360 as the terminal consoles acquired in Joe’s Collection.

The game lot did not come with a PS3, which I was thankful for.  We just recently got our very own PS3 for a screamin’ deal from the thrift store and stepped into the world of new(ish) generation gaming.  What was great about that particular PS3 was that it came to us for $20 and made a make-work learning project for my better half as he tore it apart for cleaning purposes.  Anyway, the PS3 games we got from Joe’s collection were all complete and in great condition, but I honestly can’t see myself playing a lot of them myself except for 3D Dot Game Heroes or Little Big Planet.  The other games all fall into genres that I don’t feel would interest me very much, or might be better saved for an experience with a PC.

The Playstation 2 bounty was plentiful in this game lot.  There are a wide variety of titles and several Playstation 2 consoles.  We received a PS2 slim, a PS2 fat unboxed, and one in the box that was so well wrapped that I don’t know if it’s ever been played.  I didn’t bother to take the boxed one out for the photo, but below you can see the three consoles and the plethora of controllers that came along with them (as usual, I’ve left the power and audio/video cables out because they’re ugly.)  There was a wired aftermarket controller that I didn’t bother photographing, but I did include my favourite controller of the bunch: a second aftermarket wireless controller by Logitech (it’s on top of the slim.)  It’s the same as the one I got with my own PS2 on my 16th birthday and I can honestly say it’s the best wireless controller I’ve ever used.  I was really happy to get a second one just in case mine ever kicks the bucket.

An interesting doodad I’d never seen before was the external memory card adaptor (also on top of the slim) that is used to load saves from earlier PS consoles on a PS3.  It connects via a USB cord.  I haven’t tried it out yet, but this might be useful since I do own the backwards compatible PS3 and might like to play my older game saves on the newer system.

Now for the games!  We received over 60 games in total, but some of them were doubles that I’ve put aside and did not include in the photos here.  I’ll start with some of the offbeat titles that didn’t quite fit into the other categories I made up in my head while arranging games for photos.  We have a baseball game, an arcade compilation that I’m sure my boyfriend will adore, and Dog’s Life.  Dog’s Life has been described as a very strange and lackluster experience with at least two controller buttons dedicated to activities surrounding excrement.  I think I might find it interesting at the very least.  I don’t know much about the HD Loader except that it allows you to store whole games on the hard drive of the system so that you don’t need the discs to play anymore.  As a fan of physical media, I don’t know that it’s something I’d be inclined to use unless I had screaming children that were always scratching my games.

Next up we have some obsolete online-only games for the PS2.  The first is Final Fantasy XI and some of its expansion packs/collector’s editions.  The servers for FFXI shut down fairly recently, so unfortunately none of these games are currently playable.  Everquest Adventures is also unable to be enjoyed since the servers for the game shut down in 2012.  Though the box art for all the games is pretty interesting and they come complete with other goodies, I’m not sure if we will keep these ones.  I enjoy playing the games I collect, and we are a bit scarce on shelf space.  We’ve got some pondering to do here.

In order to participate in online gameplay with the Playstation 2, a special hard drive/modem was required.  Though the games are obsolete at this point, we still have a wonderful piece of history in the boxed component and all its instruction manuals and inserts.  It came with another copy of Final Fantasy XI and was practically brand new.  As far as I know it hasn’t been previously installed.  It’s neat to see this stuff!

We also picked up some Final Fantasy games that are actually playable!   I can’t say I know much about Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus, but I know that it has a lower price tag than many of the other FF games.  I don’t know if that’s because it’s not a good game or just really common, but I digress.  Final Fantasy X  on the other hand is a game I know well since it was the first FF game I ever played.  I loved it and was moved so much by the story that I can still watch the game’s ending without any other context and it still brings me to tears.  I’ve mentioned in a few places on WordPress that the opening song (To Zanarkand) in the game’s menu is one of my favourite pieces from any video game.  Anyway, I’ve still got my personal copy of FFX from my teens, but it’s nice to see a second one in such nice shape.  I once played through part of FFX-2 but never finished it in part because one of my sisters moved away and took it with her.   And lastly, FFXII was a game I almost finished in its entirety until graduate school happened and I got distracted.  I think my saved game file is right at the final stretch of the game, but I desperately want to start it over again and play it through completely.  I have a guide now which will help me fend off the seemingly endless number of sidequests!  What’s nice about the version we got is that it’s the collector’s edition of the game in a steel case.  I only have the regular edition, so that is also a nice touch!

The RPGs and action adventure games keep coming, and there are some solid finds here. Xenosaga is a game my family once owned, but it was also taken when my sisters moved away.  I’ve heard it’s the most excellent of the series, so I figure I can start with that and see if the others are worth picking up.  Having just recently found Suikoden and Suikoden II at a swap, I was happy to also run across Suikoden IV, though I’ve heard mixed reviews about it.  I was also pleased to see two games from the “Tales” series, Tales of Legendia and Tales of the Abyss pop up.  This game collection has a few other installments in the “Tales” series on other platforms, so it’ll be nice to delve into those sometime as well.  You all know how I feel about Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2 since I posted fairly recently about them, but there were two games here that I had never heard of: Ar tonelico and Phantom Brave.  I’ve definitely got some work cut out for me trying to get a handle on what all these games are about!  Anyone played either of those before?

The fun didn’t stop there.  A bunch more really great games of a similar genre were also in those many, many boxes we have cluttering up much of our living space.  The Castlevania game and Rogue Galaxy are both still sealed, which is why they look a little washed out.  Escape from Monkey Island was a fun thing to run across since I’m a huge fan of the series.  I’ve heard a few gripes about this particular installment because of the “ridiculousness” of a point-and-click using the PS2 interface, but I’d be willing to give it a whirl.  The back of the game case for ICO (Ico?) reads like a relative to Quest 64, and I have no idea what to make of it (I’ll put it into the questionable category with Dog Life.)  The game’s box art looks like it doesn’t belong on the PS2 at all, but who am I to judge a game by its cover?  The top row in the photo below is a rockstar lineup: Valkyrie Profile 2, Odin Sphere, and the first two Disgaea games.  I’m looking forward to those!

Along with games in the regular plastic cases came three with cardboard boxes.  For Dragon Quest VIII and Star Ocean: Til the End of time, the boxes only contained the normal plastic case and an extra copy of the manual, but the big box for Growlanser Generations Deluxe contained the game and a bunch of extra goodies including a watch, a deck of cards, and the soundtrack.  That particular iteration of the game usually came with a ring, but that was missing from the box.  Working Designs really knew how to cater to their audience, and to the people who collected their games.  This is the third “big box” game I own now from them, the other two being the two Lunar games for PS1.

Moving away from RPGs and action adventure games leaves us with a little bit of everything else.  Many of these games I’ve heard are excellent, but again, they’re slightly outside of my comfort zone of cushy, linear role-playing games.  One thing I found hilarious was that the three Devil May Cry games are here.  Again.  It seems whenever I get a game lot that includes PS2 games, those are always included.  I’m pretty sure I’m up to at least 5 copies of the first game that I’ve been meaning to give away or sell, and at least my second or third copies of the second and third games.  It’s like a running joke in my head now.  I could make a coffee table out of them!   Do you folks have any recommendations for me out of the two photos below?  I know my boyfriend adores Half-Life but can’t imagine playing it on console.

The last huge bunch of games we got I grouped together because they seemed cartoon-y and a bit more lighthearted than the last bunch I lumped together above.  Katamari Damacy is a game I heard about only last year and have been dying to play.  I haven’t picked it up before now because the price was never right, but it looks like I can finally try it out!  Okami also looks like a really interesting game.  Again, I don’t know much about the others here or which series Mega Man X7 is a part of at the moment, so I’m a little lost on opinions for any of those.  Any insight you guys might have about what’s good would be helpful!

Along with all these games came a few oddities that you don’t normally see hanging around in every collection.  The first was a Guitar Hero II Demo Kit.  Thought it had previously been opened, it came complete with the guitar controller, demo instructions, stickers, pins, the demo game, a cardboard guitar stand, as well as four identical posters as shown below.  This is something that we will likely try to sell so that we can make a little money back after this enormous purchase.  I’m sure there are some completionists out there in the world looking for this very thing.  I’m not sure how many of these were made or still exist, but it’s certainly a nice little piece of history.

One of the things in the best shape we stumbled across was this Tekken 5 fight stick.  The box is unsealed, but everything inside looks as if it has never been unwrapped.  I didn’t take it apart to preserve its minty-ness, but I wanted to add a lovely photo of the box here for your viewing pleasure.  The only memories I have of Tekken growing up are playing against a friend of mine who just spammed the same move at me over and over again.  I feel the same way about playing Tekken as I do about playing Mortal Kombat against my boyfriend.  It’s a fruitless exercise for my ego.

Lastly, we have two more collector’s items: two never-before-opened chainsaw controllers that were sold for use with Resident Evil 4.  I’ve looked at some photos of these online and they look awesome!  They’re painted to look nice and bloody if you’re into that.  This might be another set of items we look to sell because in this condition, I think they’re quite sought after.  We’ll have to see how things go though.  I might want to tear one open and try it out, though we do have another one for another platform that’s already open…

Don’t you love my vague foreshadowing?

So that just about does it for what we got from Joe’s collection for the PS2.  There is certainly a lot here in great shape with quite a few doubles to potentially part with.  It has been nice to be in the presence of some true “collector” items.  Though I think of myself as a video game collector, I certainly never deliberately acquire these rarer items that serve no purpose to me other than to sit in their boxes on a shelf and look nice.  If we choose to sell them, I truly hope that we can find them good homes where they’ll be appreciated by people that are into that and make a bit of cash back!

My PS2 collection to date prior to this purchase was a bit pitiful, mainly consisting of one million different copies of the Devil May Cry games.  I’m happy to see it becoming much more well-rounded.

Thought I have no idea what I’ll post about next from this collection acquisition, stay tuned for the next post in this series.  We still have at least 18 more posts to go!

Thanks for reading!

-GG

Hungry Goriya Used Acquire: The Magnavox Odyssey 2

This is the first post in a series called “Hungry Goriya Used Acquire” that serves to highlight the contents of a large game collection I procured from an old high school friend of mine, Joe.  Read here for the backstory.

Though I had previously heard of the Magnavox Odyssey console, I had not heard about its successor the Odyssey 2, nor did I ever expect to own one.  The console was released in the late 1970s and was in direct competition with other massively popular consoles of the time like the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision.  The Odyssey 2 is not rare by any means, but having been out and about at game swaps and exchanges a lot over the past few years, I can honestly say I’ve never seen one before now.

The Odyssey 2 I received from Joe came to me boxed. Though it was a little worn along its edges, the console box was in decent shape without any major scratches, scuffs or tears.  Along with the console and the connectors, five games were also included.

I don’t know about you guys, but I am absolutely adoring the packaging for the Odyssey 2.  Everything is so bright and fun!  Speaking of glorious things for my eyes to take in, the Odyssey 2 also came with all its inserts, manuals, and warranty card.  I love seeing stuff like this.  I especially love the 70s-esque family with pure delight on their faces playing the games.  Let those kids have a turn!

The game boxes for this console were either made of plastic or cardboard, and the cardboard ones have definitely seen better days.  Although they are not torn or ripped, some of their integrity is gone as if the material has given up after all these years.  The games we received are Computer Golf!, Alien Invaders Plus!, Las Vegas Blackjack!, K. C. Munchkin, and a compilation cartridge with three games, including Speedway!, Spin Out!, and Crypto-Logic!.  I promise I am not being overly enthusiastic.  Each Odyssey 2 game has an exclamation point at the end of its name to clearly emphasize all of the awesomeness contained within.

What do you all think about this awesome box art for Alien Invaders Plus!?  I’ve seen a lot of RPG box art with similarities to this like the tiny city in the bubble (Final Fantasy, anyone?) or scaly creatures attacking the protagonist (ummm, Dragon Warrior?), but nothing like that for a Space Invaders clone!  I think the thing everyone is wondering about this image is where those enemy ships coming from.  That’s one mighty multi-snake orifice.  Yuck.

Though none of the games we got here are particularly rare,  one of them was shrouded in controversy following its release: K. C. Munchkin.  It is a “Pac Man clone”, though truthfully it only bears some similarities in design and concept and has about an equal number of differences to set it apart.  I’d capture some gameplay for you all, but I currently have no way to capture RF output – we are looking at old VCRs and the like all the time to no avail.  Thankfully in the times of the internet, there are plenty of videos online showcasing the game’s footage.  I’ll let you all be the judge even though a real judge already ruled on this lawsuit case ages ago.

Before finding Joe’s collection, I only owned one retro boxed console.  It was my childhood NES, which is put away in a closet somewhere at the moment.  I’m pretty proud to be able to add this beautiful box and its contents to its place in the Nerd Room in the (hopefully) near future.  We definitely need to get more shelves and get organized!  There are so many new goodies to set up and display.

Thank you very much for reading.  I hope you’re looking forward to the next posts in the series.

-GG

Emerging from the Shadows

I’ve been quiet lately, and with good reason.  In my last post, I alluded to the possibility of buying up a friend’s enormous video game collection, and that has happened.  Between being up to my eyes in work and trying to sort through and clean up almost two truckloads of games and gaming-related items over the past few weeks, I’m finally done with my inventory and am still organizing and preparing to start photographing everything tomorrow.  Over the next few weeks/months, I’m hoping to start a series of posts featuring each of the 20 console types and their games/accessories, complete with photos and other ramblings.

For some backstory about the collection, the person I bought it from is an old high school friend.  Joe always had some kind of handheld bleep-blooping away on spares and at lunch in the cafeteria, and he eventually got hired on at EB Games, the Canadian equivalent of Game Stop.  Since we took the bus home together, he often boasted about his game collection and all the trade-ins he was getting, and I always listened enviously.  I had applied at EB Games in my youth and had never even gotten an interview there, so I was a little jaded about his success.  At the time, I was so busy with other extracurriculars that I didn’t dwell on it too much.  After high school, he eventually moved away and we kept in touch sporadically for about 15 years or so until I randomly sent him an email last summer.  My boyfriend and I had been planning to go to a swap near his city, and I was curious about whether or not he might be interested in meeting up either at the swap or afterward for supper to touch base.  At that point, he told me that he was no longer collecting and was hoping to sell everything he had – at long last!  He said I could have first perusal of his stuff before he put things up on eBay and promised an inventory in the months to come, but his wife had a baby and a whole year passed with no progress.

I waited very patiently until this Spring when I sent Joe an email to check in and see how he was enjoying fatherhood, and he immediately rekindled the conversation about the collection.  He invited my boyfriend and I over to see everything, and we did a few weekends ago.  Though we were disappointed that he had already parted with some really cool games (Snatcher for Sega CD, dammit!), we struck a deal, and it took two separate trips with a large rental vehicle to get everything home.  The grand total of games lies somewhere around 600 across 20+ platforms, and that’s not including guides and art books, swag and press kits from two years at E3, among many other things.  Though I don’t love every single thing we got, I sure love a lot of it and there are certainly some gems in there.  There are also a ton of things I’ve never seen and had never even heard about until a few weekends ago, and I’m so excited to sit down and get all this out there for your viewing/reading pleasure.

Of course along the way, I’ll intersperse these collection-related posts with spontaneous thrifting ones, as well as update on other swaps we attend.  I’m also hoping to find some time to get back to streaming and LPing in a timely fashion.  My boyfriend is on a stream quality tirade, trying to integrate our Framemeister purchase and upgrading our stream output to SCART quality rather than component.  He’ll be soldering some harnesses and connectors for me, so that’ll give me some breather time to get this collection stuff sorted in the meantime.  So much is happening, but it’s all good stuff.

Thanks for coming along on this adventure with me, and thanks for reading.  I’ll do my best to catch up on all your posts in the coming days.

-GG

“Wiiiiiii!” she exclaimed delightedly she rode the New Game Train.

I’m not much of a title person.  Can you tell?

Lately I’ve been perusing the classifieds quite a bit because there have been more and more ads popping up as people clear out the cobwebs from their basements and cottages.  I saw an ad for a few Wii games appear, and it was conveniently for the three Wii games I’ve been seeking for a while.  I don’t have a lot of Wii games and my checklist for the console is pretty small, so to kill three birds with one stone felt too good to be true.

Now, before I go on about what I actually bought this time around, I wanted to get this off my chest: this particular purchase was actually a really weird experience for me.  After contacting the seller and agreeing on a price, he asked me to meet him at his high school.  As a nearly 31-year-old woman, I felt totally weird and creepy meeting up with someone so young to exchange cash for goods on school property during school hours, but he refused my attempts to arrange a meeting time elsewhere.  Despite getting the willies over the meeting, I am happy I did it in the end because the games were well-loved and exactly what I was looking for.  The first two I’ll mention are Animal Crossing: City Folk, and Pikmin 2.

Animal Crossing games are slowly starting to add up in my collection.  I have a copy of the original GameCube game as well as Wild World on DS.  I haven’t heard much about City Folk, but I always enjoy finding games for a deal.  This game was only $5, and it came complete with its manual and was in reasonably decent shape.  I’m not sure when I’ll get around to playing this one since I’m struggling to resolve the guilt I feel around abandoning my first town on the GameCube just last year.  The number of weeds there must be atrocious, and thinking about it makes me cringe.  I’m also still feeling bitter about being cornered by K.K. Slider that first Saturday night I tried to talk to him and was suddenly stuck listening to his song for 5 whole minutes.  I’m not sure I’m ready yet.

The Pikmin 2 game was a really exciting thing to run across.  I own the first Pikmin game on GameCube and had been interested in getting the second game for months now, but I hadn’t been able to find a reasonably priced GameCube copy.  After doing a bit of research to distinguish the difference between the GC and Wii releases, I found out that many people actually liked the control changes on the Wii and recommended the game over the original release.  It was also helpful that the game was being sold for $20, which was an absolute steal given its going rate everywhere I’ve seen it ($60+).  I might end up playing the Pikmin games between RPGs if I can ever get around to finishing those!

The third game I found was Kirby’s Dream Collection (Special Edition), a compilation I’ve wanted to own for many years.  I originally passed up buying a used copy from EB Games a long while ago for $10, and I’ve regretted it ever since.  Looking back on things, this regret came at a time in my life where I didn’t own a single Kirby game, and now I own almost all the games on the compilation with the exception of Kirby’s Dreamland 3.  Things have definitely changed!  Because I never plan to purchase Kirby’s Dreamland 3 for the SNES unless I find it at a garage sale for dirt cheap (it’s a $100 cartridge!), the Wii bundle will have to do.  In addition to the games, what I loved about the idea of the Dream Collection was the music CD soundtrack.  I can’t wait to pop it in and have a listen.

A little aside on the topic of music CDs: I recently found a sealed copy of the Super Mario History Soundtrack CD that I have no intention of opening (no photo here since the wrap makes the already difficult gold-on-red font even harder to read.)  After listening to the tracks on YT, I’m honestly a little disappointed.  All they did was release one song from each of the Super Mario Bros. games released to date at the time, but didn’t do anything new with them.  If I want to hear the Ground/Athletic Themes from any of the Mario games, I’ll just pop in the game and play it.  I much prefer re-orchestrations or re-imaginings of these classic tunes in the same vein as what they did with The Legend of Zelda’s 25th Anniversary Special Orchestra CD.  I’m surprised Nintendo didn’t do more for its flagship franchise’s 25th anniversary celebration, but I digress.  Aside complete!

The only thing missing from the Kirby compilation was the cardboard sleeve (meh) and the art book.  I asked the seller if he had it lying around somewhere and had forgotten to include it, but it turns out that it was given away to a friend.  Oh well.  There is lots of Kirby art online.  He is just the cutest, and I would pinch his cheeks all day long if I could.  For the low, low price of $20, I couldn’t pass this one up either.

In extremely exciting news, I am heading out of town this weekend to visit an old friend of mine from high school.  He has an enormous game collection that he has been amassing for years and was considering selling it last year when I had sent him an email checking in.  Soon after we spoke, his wife had their first baby and as a result, everything has been pushed to now.  In the meantime he has sent me some photos, and there are some truly excellent things in there.  I won’t spoil much, but if he is still willing to sell, I might be able to obtain some true rarities and gems.  What’s killing me is that he’s only sent me photos of half of what he has.  There’s still 50% I know nothing about!

The suspense is killing me.

Anyway, I hope that you all enjoy the slide down to the end of the week from Hump Day.  Hopefully I will have some new and exciting updates around the bend.

Thanks for reading, as always!

-GG

Wisdom Tree Kickstarter

Last year I decided to take the plunge and support a Kickstarter endeavour by Wisdom Tree (see this post), a company known for producing and distributing unlicensed games for both the NES and the Sega Genesis.  A lot of their games contained religious themes and imagery that conflicted with Nintendo’s firm censorship rules, but despite these setbacks, Wisdom Tree fought the Lockout Chip War and found a way to get their games out there.

I first heard about Wisdom Tree and these bible-based video games from the Angry Video Game Nerd (Episode 17) back in 2009.  The Bible Games episode just so happened to be the first episode I ever saw from the AVGN series and is what made me fall in love with the web show.  Having grown up going to Catholic church, the games reviewed in that AVGN episode struck a special chord with me.  It was both hilarious and intriguing to see stories I’d grown up hearing my entire life parodied in such an interesting and funny way, and I was pretty desperate to play the games and experience their “horribleness” for myself.  One of the first gifts my boyfriend ever bought for me was a copy of Bible Adventures, one of the several unlicensed NES cartridges put out by Wisdom Tree.  Sitting on my living room floor and playing “Baby Moses” for the first time on my 55″ LCD TV was an experience that had me laughing to tears, and I wanted more.

Unfortunately for me as an eager collector, these games have been launched into superstar status over the past few years and have consequently seen skyrocketing price tags along with many other retro games.  When I saw the Kickstarter project come up, the initial premise was for Wisdom Tree to produce a plug-and-play console with all their original releases on it.  Because I’ve become a bit of an audio/video snob and like a higher quality on original hardware for my gameplay experience, I didn’t want a composite video hookup directly into my flat screen.  Thankfully, my wish came true as Wisdom Tree was releasing multicarts of their video game releases for the NES and the Sega Genesis!  They were also re-releasing a game called Super Noah’s Ark 3D, which was a re-skin of Wolfenstein 3D with entities from the story of Noah’s Ark.  I jumped all over that and pledged $95 USD.  After a few delays, the games arrived at my house last month in all their glory!

Though I’ve played a ton out of Bible Adventures before, I’ve been dabbling a bit in the games I’ve never had a chance to play, primarily Bible Buffet and Spiritual Warfare.  I think I’ve got Bible Buffet figured out (it’s actually really fun), but some of the other games are tricky for various reasons, and I really just need to spend more time with and get used to the controls and gameplay mechanics.  I’m pretty desperate to sink some time into Super Noah’s Ark 3D since I used to love me some Wolfenstein 3D on DOS as a kid.  What could be better than shooting food at animals with a slingshot?

I’m really happy I caught wind of this Kickstarter initiative while it was live and got to support these folks.  It was actually really refreshing to be able to order classic games directly from the source rather than going through arbitrarily price-inflated websites (Lukie Games, anyone?)

If you’ve never heard of these games at all, I’d recommend checking them out.  Though some of the games have incredibly frustrating controls and strange gameplay mechanics, they’re sometimes a really fun and challenging twist on familiar people and places if you’re even remotely familiar with the Old Testament.  Tons of hair-pulling fun!

Happy long weekend, everyone!  Thanks for reading!

-GG

Swippity Swappity

The first game swap of the year has come and gone, and there is certainly nothing quite like the feeling of leaving a venue with a bag full of awesome games you’ve been looking for.  Below is an interpretation of exactly how I felt, except I was smiling more than Link is.  His facial expression of awe and wonder is definitely how I was feeling on the inside, though.

Without further ado, let’s get on with the fun, shall we?

The thing I find the most daunting about big swap events is that there’s just so much to take in all at once.  There are tables and tables of games, and if you don’t head down the right aisle first, you might not get what you’re looking for if someone else beats you to it.  It’s always a crapshoot, but I’ve also learned to take some time and look around at every table before buying (see this post and all the regret I had when I panicked and rushed into buying a crappy label Earthbound.)  Since we’re often travelling to these events from out of town, one thing we will often do is get early access tickets that permit us into the venue 30 minutes before the regular crowd barges in.  This at least gives us a slight advantage in getting some of the rarer things that otherwise might get scooped up.

Let’s get the elephant out of the room here.  One game I bought on an impulse was Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, and I have serious regrets – this is why the Wizrobes are carrying it away above.  I stupidly always get Alex Kidd and Wonder Boy confused in my head even though they’re very different game styles.  In the recent past, I had watched several long video reviews on both franchises to try to piece together which other games I wanted to pick up.  I remember hearing one reviewer go on about a dud among the gems, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember whether it was from Alex Kidd or Wonder Boy, and even worse, I couldn’t remember which game title was filled with terribleness.  The person selling said Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle was a good game when I asked, and me being a foolish, naive person took his word.  I inherited a real awful game here.  I playtested it for about 5 minutes and died at least 10 times.  I won’t go on much more about it, but I want my $25 back.  At least the game was in good condition and came with is manual.  It was probably so nice because nobody played it after getting skewered a billion times in the first five seconds of the game.

The game I set out searching for right away was Phantasy Star IV on the Sega Genesis.  At the last few swaps, I found the second and third in the series and found the first game online in recent months.  Phantasy Star IV was the last one on my list, and it wasn’t one I was willing to buy online for close to $100.  I only found two copies in the entire place that were boxed.  One boxed copy ($130) came with the manual, although it was really tattered and not in good shape at all.  The other boxed copy ($80) was without its manual, but the game and the box were in astoundingly good shape (in the photo below, the label looks torn at the top but it’s just the reflection of the light coming in from my window.)  Even though I really wanted to find a complete version of this one, I couldn’t justify an extra $50 for a pile of wrinkly, bent and ripped pages that used to resemble a manual, so I ended up going with the $80 copy and getting a final price of $70.  I was going to do a trade with the seller straight out for my loose copy of Secret of Mana, but he insultingly only wanted to give me $40 trade value for the game.  I was honestly offended by this guy’s offer.  He literally had thousands of games at the swap, most complete and in gorgeous condition.  He had even arrived at the event in a Cadillac, and he was lowballing me!  I guess his lowballing skills are how he got so rich to begin with.  I held onto my trades and paid cash for this one.

The other Genesis game I was looking for was Shining Force II.  This was another game I wanted to find complete with its manual, but there was not a single one to be found in the entire venue.  I found one copy of the game that looked as if its label had been water damaged, and the guy wouldn’t go lower than $30.  It honestly looked like a piece of garbage, so I passed.  I found another loose copy of the cartridge in much better shape for only $35, so I went with that one instead.  I hope I won’t have too much trouble with the game without a manual, but if all worse comes to worse, I can always look it up online.

Since I’m a huge fan of maps and booklets for video games, I always get excited when I find some for a good price.  One that I’ve always wanted to have was the manual for Final Fantasy for NES.  It’s an 80 page instruction manual/walkthrough.  I found a copy that is a little beat up, but it has all the pages and only needs a little bit of repair to fix the ripping along the spine.  In addition to this, I tracked down a copy of the Dragon Warrior Adventure Guide – a cardboard insert that comes with information about the various ranks achieved while levelling up, as well as some information about the different spells in the game.  I luckily also ran into a map for Dragon Warrior that doubles as a bestiary.  It was fully intact, but definitely starting to wear out at the crease lines.  I honestly feel like I should laminate all my maps before they rip to shreds.  They’d definitely make some good wall art.

Staying in the vein of NES stuff, I also chanced upon some wonderful RPGs for the system: Crystalis and Willow.  Crystalis is a game I became pretty obsessed with about two years ago and was one of the games that really pushed my collecting into overdrive.  Discovering that game was one of the first times I realized that there were many good RPGs out there that I hadn’t even heard of and wanted to find and play (Golden Axe Warrior and Phantasy Star were others that soon made their way onto this list.)  At the swap, I had found a copy of Crystalis for $30 and gotten the woman selling down to $25.  This wasn’t a terrible deal given the excellent condition of the game.  I hadn’t seen the game for cheaper than $30 in over a year.

Willow was a definite steal.  I got the game with its box and manual for $20!  At many other tables, the game was going for $20 just for the cartridge, so I really feel like I lucked out there.  Oddly enough, it was being sold by a seller who had a ton of games complete that were at least $10 over the going rate on eBay, so I was surprised to have found a deal there.  Though the manual has some passwords scrawled across its front page, the box and cartridge look brand new.  I don’t think I’ll ever get past the vacant look in Willow’s eyes though…

Since I still had a bunch of trades burning a hole in my bag, I was looking for a more expensive game to barter for.  I ended up back at the table with the water damaged Shining Force II cartridge and asked the seller if he was taking any trades.  I pulled out what I had – loose copies of Secret of Mana and Zombies Ate my Neighbours (SNES), a complete copy of Wonder Boy in Monster Land (SMS), and a complete copy of World of Illusion (Genesis).  He said he was very interested.  I saw that he had Suikoden and Suikoden II, which are fairly expensive PS1 games (especially the second!)  After looking at their condition and determining the trade value to be at around $160, I ended up getting both games for the trades plus $60, which wasn’t too bad.  Suikoden came without its manual, while Suikoden II came complete.  I wish both had been complete, but the trade seemed fair enough and the CDs were in very good shape.  The case for Suikoden II is cracked, but that’s an easy fix.  I have a few extra jewel cases lying around.

I’ve heard Suikoden II foisted up unto many a-pedestal as one of the best RPGs of all time, so I was almost tempted to forego the first game for the sake of cost.  The vendor I bought these from told me that I should play the first one before the second because apparently you can carry things from the first over to the second game.

The last things we got from this swap were for my better half, and they’re the only things he wanted: another professional monitor, and a Neo Geo game.  Since getting his Neo Geo up and running, my boyfriend has been itching for a copy of Baseball Stars 2 among the others we acquired recently (post incoming!).  The game is a hilarious take on the usual baseball formula, employing lots of burliness and machoness in its fast-paced gameplay.  The professional monitor we picked up was a 14-inch JVC TM-R14U that has an absolutely beautiful display.  I wish there was some way to capture it to convey its loveliness, but alas.

All in all, I’d say we had an extremely successful swap!  Though my list is ever-growing, I certainly got to knock of a lot of things off of it.  I’m really happy to have gotten so many games I’ve been looking around for in one place at one time.  Now to just find the time to play them all…

Thanks so much for reading!

-GG

Things I Wish I Knew: Ys – The Vanished Omens (SMS)

Ys: The Vanished Omens was a game developed by Falcom in 1987 and saw a release on the Sega Master System in 1988.  You play as Aron, a swordsman who has washed ashore in an unknown land following a hurricane.  The townspeople fill him in on the local lore about the Goddesses that have saved their world from great evils in the past.  They also tell of the six Books of Ys where the deeds of the Goddesses are recorded, and how the person who possesses all six will be granted immense power.  Unfortunately, the books are hidden away, and there’s an evil sorcerer who has one of them and is trying to find the others.  Obviously, it’s up to you to stop him!

This game is an absolute delight.  The sprite work on overworld characters is adorable.  When you enter a house or shop, the artwork goes up one billion notches to full-blown, realistically detailed pixel art.  It’s amazing to see such beautiful artwork so early on in the life of the Sega Master System.

Another extremely high point for the game is the music.  All facets of this game’s soundtrack are quest-y, which sets a marvelous tone and ambience for all the areas and fights you’ll encounter throughout.  Thanks to a wonderful suggestion from The Deviot, I took a listen to the PC-88 version of the soundtrack and was completely blown away by how awesome it is.  The SMS pipes are good, but the PC-88 version is a bit more well-rounded and well, gorgeous.  Yuzo Koshiro and Mieko Ishikawa did an excellent job.  I don’t know that this is a soundtrack that I’ll ever stop listening to.

Despite all its positives, the game does suffer from some of those old-school RPG tendencies that are not at all apparent to a first time player like myself.  As usual, though I read the manual from front to back before beginning, here are a few things I wish I had known prior to beginning the game.

The bump attack mechanics.  I had read a lot about the bump attack and had a decent idea of how to execute it so my character wouldn’t take any damage.  Step 1: be slightly off-center.  Step 2: try to attack from the side or the back.  Easy enough, right?  But despite all this, even when I followed the rules, I often ran into situations where I was taking damage.  There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason for why your bump attacks fail sometimes and connect others.  This is especially true in boss fights where the sprites are so enormous and have “sweet spots” to attack.

Enemies too strong for you will cause you to instantaneously disintegrate.  I’m not sure why I tend to love games where death ends in disintegration of your character (Faxanadu, anyone?) but my first few steps out of Minea had me face off with a dog-like enemy that, upon my attempt to destroy it, caused me to literally disintegrate into nothingness.  There’s nothing quite like getting your ass handed to you by an angry, red monster, especially when you haven’t even thought to save yet.

You need to be at a certain level to fight bosses.  This was a tricky thing in practice.  I had found the first boss and had been trying to release my wrath upon him, but I was the only one taking damage.  Someone pointed out to me that the little “clink” noise that I kept hearing when trying to attack was a very subtle indication that I wasn’t at a high enough level.  Because you get locked in the room with the boss after entering regardless of whether or not you’re at a high enough level, you get to stand there and take in death’s sweet invitation.  Needless to say, it took me getting killed a lot before realizing that my insufficient level and not my bump attack form was to blame.

You can reach a maximum level quite early in the game.  When trying to fight Batman, I had been having a really hard time executing an effective strategy and had gone off to do some grinding to strengthen my character.  What I didn’t realize was that you can only level up to level 10 before you reach a ceiling of sorts.  After that, any increase to your defense and strength comes from finding better weapons and armour, but those upgrades don’t come until later.  The best bet is obviously to work on your skills and strategy against that specific boss, but considering I’m not really used to action-based RPGs, this was the last thought on my mind as I was trying to go to the usual “over powered” route.

Once you enter the Tower, you can’t go back.  They tell you this straight out in the game, but what they don’t tell you is that *spoilers ahead, highlight to see!* your primo weapons get taken away and that if you didn’t buy all the best upgrades, you’re essentially screwed.  Though I wasn’t sure what would happen after entering the Tower, I had skeptically made a new save in a new slot just in case something terrible might happen.  Thank goodness I did, or else I would’ve had a lot of starting over to do.

Everything in the Tower looks the same.  The colours of the rooms, the enemies, everything.  It’s incredibly disorienting, and there are very few landmarks to help you figure out where you are.  A map would obviously be helpful, but since you are not supplied with one and making one is like Hell on Earth, you’ll likely just wander around aimlessly for a lot longer than you really need to.  What makes things worse is the next point below.

You need to backtrack in the tower.  It doesn’t seem intuitive at all, but you will need to backtrack to places you’ve previously been many floors below quite often to be able to progress at some points during your ascension.  Good luck finding your way back to that random person in a random hallway in one of the many branching pathways.  There are really no obvious cues for this either.  You run into a dead end and can’t move forward, so you’re stuck scratching your head and scouring every single last corner for items or people you might have missed.

The Tower has some weird puzzles.  You get some great items in the game, but there is little to no explanation about how they are used or what purpose they serve.  Even the manual is vague about most of it.  Don’t even get me started on the random pillar on the random Tower floor that you need to hit with a hammer to stop the room a few floors away with the doom music from depleting your health.   Yeah.  Try figuring that one out.

You can miss items and equipment in the Tower completely, and forever.  There’s a point of no return in the Tower, and it lands you right before the second last boss battle of the game.  If you’ve missed the “best” sword, armour and shield in the game, be prepared to spend a long, long while fighting this fight.  You will take so much damage from the projectiles surrounding these enemies that after a few hits, you’re done for.  This makes it absolutely necessary to learn patterns and be quick on your feet so you can survive long enough to win, and this task can seem insurmountable.  I spent a solid 1.5 hours with this boss my first time through since I had unknowingly forgotten the armour, and I truly can’t describe it as anything other than nightmarish.

The game lore is often misleading.  Some of the Books of Ys talk about “creria” being the material required to fell Dulk Dekt (aka Dark Dekt, etc.), but they don’t actually tell you what “creria” is.  You might assume that your final and “best” weapon of the game is made of the stuff, but no.  It isn’t.  Your best weapons and armour for that fight are actually the ones you head into the Tower with.  As much as it’s not intuitive, your Silver Sword does considerably more damage against Dulk Dekt than the final Flame Sword.  It would’ve been nice had someone in the game mentioned that they were one and the same!

Despite all my whining here, Ys: The Vanished Omens is a tremendously great game.  Most of my qualms are really just idiosyncrasies of the game’s release period when RPGs were vague, convoluted, and seriously unforgiving.  I have a masochistic love for these types of challenges, and I would highly recommend this game to anyone that loves action RPGs, and especially to anyone wanting to experience foundational releases in a game series.  This game was the little seed from which the huge Ys franchise grew out of, and it is certainly worth enjoying at some point.

After streaming the game, I put together a set of Let’s Play videos showcasing my second experience with the game.  If anyone is interested, you can check that out here.

 

As always, thank you very much for reading and being with me on this journey to play through the old games we collect.

-GG

More Nintendo!

The swap this past weekend was a very big success, but because my house is a bit of a construction zone at the moment, my favourite photo spot is unavailable and it’ll take me some time to get everything fancied up for a post about all of that.  In the meantime, I just wanted to quickly share a photo of some Pokemon/Mario games I got a few weeks ago and forgot to include in the previous post.

I answered a classifieds ad that had a bunch of DS games listed for only $5 each.  I normally have the expectation that most of them are going to be Hannah Montana or Nintendogs, but sure enough in this particular lot, there were some good, classic games waiting to be scooped up.  I managed to snag a copy of Pokemon Platinum, Pokemon Pearl, and New Super Mario Bros. for $15.  Because the woman selling was purging some other games as well, she offered us two fold-up cases for loose games and three plastic snap cases as well.  I think we only have a total of four loose games for DS, and they’ll settle into these quite nicely.

It was really great to see the two Pokemon games come with their manuals and inserts, but unfortunately the Mario game didn’t come with any of that.  Everything was in really nice condition, and I’ve practically doubled my DS collection with this purchase.  Not too shabby for a cool $15.

Hopefully this will tide you all over until I can rush these construction folks out of my house in a few days.  I’m pretty anxious to tell you all about the swap!

Thanks for reading!

-GG

Odds and Ends – Nintendo Stuff

With the first day of Spring come and gone, gaming-related things are slowly starting to wiggle out of the woodwork again!  Much to my delight, lots of Nintendo games and accessories have found their way to me, and we’ve even made a new comrade in the process.

When we visited a flea market recently and found a bunch of Sega Genesis stuff, we also found a copy of Rampart for NES.  I first discovered the real time strategy game while watching Pat Contri and Ian Ferguson’s Annual NES Marathon.  I had felt a little mesmerized by Rampart and had felt like I needed more of it when they turned the game off and went onto the next one.  It looked so fun to play with someone else or even against the computer!  The premise is that you build up a base by placing walls and cannons for a few minutes, and then your bases battle it out.  I have no idea what the end goal is, but it looked like something I might enjoy.  The cartridge was beautiful, but a little more than I wanted to pay at $20.  I sucked it up because we were getting such a good deal on other stuff that day.

In addition to Rampart, I also found a copy of Metroid on eBay for a screamin’ deal.  I ordered from an ad that said that the copy of the cartridge I’d receive may not be the same condition as the game in the photo, and I was unpleasantly surprised to find that they sent me the later game release with the yellow label rather than the traditional grey one.  That’s what I get for trusting humans on the internet to read my mind about exactly what I want!  Regardless, the cartridge was still in great shape, and there were no substantial changes to the game itself between release versions.  Buying Metroid was singlehandedly driven by my experience reading about LightingEllen‘s quest to finish the game late last year, and her thoughts about it in a post here.  I’m excited to be able to turn into a little ball and take the plunge into a very well-loved series I have yet to experience at all.

A local shop was also selling a few odds and ends, and one of them was a four player adapter for Game Boy.  This one will be hard to try out considering that my childhood Game Boy’s screen is detached… the glue completely dried up.  Thankfully my boyfriend’s is still intact, but that leaves us a second player short.  We just need to find another Game Boy friend!  There were actually a lot of Game Boy games released that are compatible with the four player adapter, but it doesn’t appear that we own many of them.  Damn my love or solitary gaming experiences.  Maybe some day!

The store was also selling an e-Card Reader, but I didn’t pick it up.  I’m not really sure how it works or where to get cards for it.  Thoughts?

Back to Game Boy games!  I found a copy of Sword of Hope for a reasonably decent price of $18 on eBay, and it came to me all the way from Germany.  There was a copy of the game here in town for $20, and when I had asked the hock shop owner if he’d come down to $15 (the game had literally been there for years and even had a faded price tag on it), he said no!  I was shocked!  I wish them the best of luck selling that game for $20, or maybe for even more now since he said that the price had gone up on the game when checking “his sources”.  I’m pretty sure he mistook the game for the second installment, Sword of Hope 2, which is considerably more expensive for reasons unbeknownst to me.  Oh well.  At least I have a copy now, and for less than $20 shipped.  The game plays similarly to Shadowgate or Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom (another game I want to play!) where you have a first person perspective and move through various locations.  Sword of Hope has RPG elements like weapons and armour, as well as spells from what I can tell.  I look forward to its vagueness!  You’ve gotta love the cartridge art: dragon eyeball and a sword.  It can’t get more epic quest-like than that.

I mentioned at the beginning of this post that we might have made a friend recently, but I suppose friend is a loose term.  After answering a classifieds ad, we met another collector in town: an 18-year-old guy with at least two walls and several cupboards full of games!  Initially we had responded to his ad for some GameCube games including Kirby’s AirRide, and Metroid Prime.  I’m not usually into first person shooters, but after reading many, many positive thoughts about Metroid Prime, I decided to dive in.  Both games came complete with their manuals, and the discs were in relatively good shape.  While testing out the Kirby game, I couldn’t help but let a few squees escape me as the adorable little Kirby drove his adorable little star with his adorable little Kirby-like compadres.  So cute!  I think it’s hilarious how you only have to push buttons to brake and steer, and that otherwise your character is on autopilot.  Despite the seeming simplicity of the game mechanics, I am just awful.  Practice, practice, practice!

The collector we met said he had a bunch of stuff available that he hadn’t listed yet and sent me some photos to look through.  We first offered him a trade that he refused, so we ended up scaling back our list and only buying up a few more things from him.  We got Mega Man X for SNES, as well as Cobra Triangle and Friday the 13th for NES (I thought of you, Cheap Boss Attack!).  Friday the 13th and Mega Man X’s labels were only in okay condition with a bit of peeling, but it’s nothing that a little glue won’t fix right up.  Everything is working great.  My boyfriend is very excited for some boating shenanigans with Cobra Triangle, which does honestly look like a lot of fun.  Everything that runs on that 45 degree/faux 3D angling reminds me of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure, and I’m quite fine with that.

I might have mentioned it before, but Mega Man X was one of the only games I have ever sold in my life.  In my 20s, I had bought it to play with a then-friend of mine, and we eventually parted ways in the worst way possible.  Because the game continually reminded me of the memories from that friendship and because I had no intention of playing it again at the time, I had sold it to someone for $10 and had even delivered it across town to be rid of it.  Having had some time to grow from that point in my life, I’m quite happy to own a copy of it now and will hopefully make some new memories with it.  I don’t know that I’ll be gunning to get my hands on X2 an X3 any time soon considering their price tags, but if the price is right, maybe!  Either way, I won’t feel so guilty about leaving it behind anymore.

Because our collector friend wouldn’t take our trade, we missed out on a few CIB games that I was hoping to play sometime for the Sega Genesis.  These included Dynamite Headdy, Rocket Knight Adventures, Dungeons and Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun, as well as The Jungle Book.  On the bright side, we are going to a game swap this coming weekend so I might find some of those games there.  What I’m really hoping for is to trade someone some games for Phantasy Star IV or Shining Force II.  I’d also trade for Skies of Arcadia as well.  Here’s hoping!

I hope you’re all enjoying this nice, sunny Thursday.  Thanks for reading!

-GG

Multi-Console Game Lot: Genesis, SMS and NES

Sometimes I luck out and happen to be the first person to reply to an ad.  I’m surprised this doesn’t happen for me more often since I probably check the video games section of the local classifieds site at least 203984 times each day, but I digress.

One person with multiple ads online had a wide selection of consoles, accessories and games for several different consoles available, including the NES, the Sega Master System, and the Sega Genesis.  The games themselves were a little bit of a mystery.  The photos were blurry and some of the games were covered up entirely.  I counted about 40 games or so in total from all three ads, as well as about five consoles with many controllers and accessories.  The kicker for me was that he hadn’t listed a price on each ad but was instead taking offers.  I’ve often lowballed people on game lots because as far as I’m concerned, if people want premium price for each item, they should be listing separately.  I assume a game lot means a combined, discounted rate of sorts.

I offered $300 and wasn’t expecting much back from the seller, but the guy got back to me later that day saying I could have it if I wanted it.  Of course, I was absolutely thrilled by this news.  We made plans to meet up the next day, and he delivered four bags and two boxes full of stuff to the house.  This was definitely one of the bigger game lots we’d bought in a while, and I immediately dove into the spoils to see what was in there.

Most of the stuff was in absolutely excellent shape, but some of it was not.  There were some game cases, mainly the Sega Master System stuff, that were clearly water damaged.  The case art pages for those games were covered in mould, and I was worried that the consoles or games had suffered a similar fate and might not be functional.  It was extremely disappointing since this was not disclosed in the ad (he didn’t even say “as is” or even allude to there being any water damage), nor were the pictures very transparent about the condition of those particular games.  I might have offered less had I known that, so I feel a little ripped off.  We took the case art pages out and gave them as good of a wipe down as we could without damaging them further and plan to iron them to get some of the wrinkles out.  They aren’t perfect by any means.  They’re actually super unsightly, so we might consider getting some prints of the original images and keeping the damaged authentic ones hidden in there as well.  We haven’t quite decided yet.  Here are some photos of the wrinkly, mouldy pages.

Along with the games, we also got two Master System consoles, their connectors and four controllers.  When we opened up the consoles to clean them up, it was apparent that one of them had seen quite a bit of water.  There was an accumulation of rust on the upper heat shield, but thankfully the electronics board was protected and seemingly unaffected.  Below, you can see the rusty heat shield on the left, and the non-damaged one on the right side.

Despite their previously watery storage conditions, the only game that gave us a great deal of trouble to start up was Ghost House, a Sega Card Game which seemingly took the brunt of the water damage out of the lot.  We had never tried out the Card Game slots on any of our Master System consoles, so when things weren’t firing up right away, we wondered if it was the game or the console slot that might not be functioning properly.  After a good contact cleaning with both chemical products and an eraser (the trusty last-ditch effort), it finally worked!  The contacts for all the other games were also quite dirty, so we gave them all a thorough scrubbing as well.  Here, you can see all the games we got.

I am especially excited for Wonder Boy, Captain Silver, and Fantasy Zone II!  I absolutely adore the Adventure Island series, and in testing out Wonder Boy for a while, I’m in love with it far more than its equivalent on the NES: Adventure Island.  The controls in Wonder Boy feel more like those of Adventure Island II (NES) rather than the stiff, rigid-feeling controls of the first Adventure Island game.  Captain Silver is also a pretty interesting game involving pirates and murder, so what could possibly go wrong there?  And I’ve always wanted to try out Fantasy Zone, so why not start with the second installment?  Very exciting times ahead!

The rest of the stuff we got was in decently good shape, though things were still smelly, musty and dusty like most other things we drag into our home from these classifieds dealings.  The Sega Genesis games were mainly ones we didn’t already have, save the two Sonic the Hedgehog Games which are going to a friend of mine.  One game case was completely empty (Bubble and Squeak), which was a bit of a disappointment.  I contacted the guy selling to ask if the game was lying around somewhere at his home, but I’ve yet to hear back from him and doubt that I will at this point.  The only game that came with its manual here was the Spiderman game, and the condition of each of the cartridges was extremely variable.  Some of them had what appeared to be rental store stickers plastered across the labels while some labels were torn or damaged.  I gambled and lost a bit here, I suppose.

An exciting thing about the Genesis stuff was the console revision type we received.  It was one of the first model 1 Genesis consoles produced since it has the words “High Definition Graphics” printed on it.  This console has an extra port on the back that other model 1s did not that was supposed to  be compatible with the failed VictorMaxx Stuntmaster, and it is also known for having a much higher audio and video quality compared to later revisions of the Genesis.  I personally grew up with a model 2, and there’s a markedly fuller sound on the model 1 consoles.

The final set of stuff we got was all NES-related.  We got two consoles, four controllers, a light gun, and 28 games.  It’s hard to see from the photo below, but one of the consoles and two of the controllers are extremely yellowed.

Because we only knew a few of the games we were getting based on what little we could see in the ad photos, a lot of the games we got were a surprise.  There were some in there that we already own, but also some we didn’t like Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, Excitebike, Rad Racer, and many  others.  I’m always happy to find extra copies of Super Mario Bros. games, and now I finally have a second copy of Faxanadu in my possession!  That was a good find as well. I was hoping to randomly find Crystalis or Willow, but no luck.  At least I lucked out with Wizards and Warriors II and some other excellent games!

Unlike much of the other stuff we received in this lot, the NES stuff, especially the cartridges, were in excellent condition.  There were a few doubles (and triples!) in the pile, so I removed those and took the photo below.  Some of the extras will go forward as trade fodder for some new games at the coming game swap, and others I’ll keep to pass along to others.

Overall, despite some problems with the condition of individual games, at least everything works!  At the end of the day, though I greatly prefer to own games that are well-cared for, being able to experience the games is my ultimate goal.  For $300, we got a ton of stuff and will be able to make many more gaming memories together and with friends, both online and in the flesh.  Truly, that’s what matters!

I hope your Friday is turning out to be wonderful.  Thanks for reading!

-GG