13 to go!!!

So it’s official… my NES collection is down to a mere 14 games.  Of course there are the big 5 very heavy hitters left to acquire:  Little Samson, Flintstones 2, Panic Restaurant, Bonk’s Adventure, and Power Blade 2.  My goal is to get all the other games besides these 5, and sit on my collection for a few years.  I have a strong feeling that the price of these rare retro NES games is trending downwards.  I see them all the time at game shows, but only once have I seen a sale at what I consider these ridiculous prices.  I did see three guys all pony up to buy a copy of Dinosaur Peak… but how does that work… who gets it when… and do any of these dudes truly have this game?!

Please don’t get upset, but I’ve never played the NES version of this Sega classic.  On the Master System I thought Fantasy Zone part 1 and 2 were fantastic games!  Such vibrant colours, interesting music, and surreal (clearly drug induced) graphics… I always thought it would be really cool to design a remake of this game, but with more realistic graphics as opposed to cartoonish.  You know, make Opa-Opa a really bad ass killing machine!  That would be awesome!  And YES I actually did beat this game in front of an audience for verification purposes… exactly the kind of difficulty I look for in a shooter… or any game for that matter… hard but not impossible.  That being said, have you every played the arcade version?  It’s damn near impossible!  The Turbo Grafx 16 version is slightly more forgiving, but also very very difficult!

Jimmy Connor’s Tennis… is thankfully the last of the sports games I needed on the NES.  I bought this game in great condition on Ebay for $55US; expensive as it is kind of rare because it came out near the end of the NES era.  I would definitely say that this game is in the top 10 sports games that only “mostly suck”… which is the best honors a sports game can get (besides Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out which is awesome!).  By no means am I saying this game isn’t a complete turd, but it is playable.  The graphics are very basic and lame, but the music is decent.  The sound FX are like Atari 2600 and there is no voice over which would have been a nice touch.  The controls are pretty good, and the fact that you just have to push a button to serve is nice.   Considering this game came out so late in the NES’s lifespan I think a lot more could have been done here… even for an 8-bit game.

SEGA Corner:  I talked about Fantasy Zone at the beginning of this post… what more do you want?!  Hail Opa-Opa!

Please follow me at #nintendojoe1985

and at #ultimate_megatron on Instagram… my G1 collection is now “complete” in that I have all the toys minus the pretenders, micromasters, and action masters… these were just abominations and were designed when Hasbro was out of ideas!

 

Nintendo Quest NES Collection Budget

Remember a while ago (three years to be exact) that movie called Nintendo Quest that was a documentary on a guy (Jay Bartlett) who challenged himself to getting all 678 North American released NES games in 30 days?!  There are some spoilers here so stop reading if you intend on watching it.  I thought that it was a pretty good film if you are into game collecting and I met Jay at a game swap in Waterloo ON,.

I do however have a few issues with the film:

1. They never mentioned what Jay’s budget for all the games was, however I’ve done some calculations and figure that he spent around $15,000 – $18,000… give or take3 a few bucks.  I’ll explain my calculations more on this at the end of this entry.
2. They rarely mentioned how much Jay paid for each game which would have been nice to see how much of a deal he received as well as a better estimate on what we the common people should be paying for these games.  This is especially bothersome as he went into some stores and claimed to have received some really good deals.  One of the stores he went to in Toronto that he said gave him the best prices was A&C Games on Spadina Ave..  I know first hand that this store has ridiculous prices… five years ago, they wanted to charge me $15 for an Atari version of E.T.  The guys said that was because E.T. is rated the worst game to ever be released on every console to date.  The game was and still worth $1 or less.  What really burns me is that even the Game Chasers who have a Youtube show went into this store and received good deals just because they featured the store on the show.  So unless you are filming a movie/show and are willing to give free media recognition, stay away from A&C Games unless you want to get ripped off.  A&C Games sucks!
3. Jay had some friends who GAVE him some really rare and expensive games like Stadium Events, Panic Restaurant, Cowboy Kid, etc.  While very generous of them, these options aren’t available to most of us collectors so and I felt a little cheated… and jealous!
4. Jay never mentioned his girlfriend once in the entire film.  It would have been more realistic to see him arguing with her about how much money he was spending/wasting on games when he could have been paying down the mortgage.

Onto how I calculated the amount Jay I think spent on the entire North American NES library.

Firstly, at the end of the 30 days, he was short 25 games and it said he had 9% of his budget left.  I calculated the market value of how much each game cost in todays prices, and that came to roughly $3,140.  Figuring that the price of games back in 2014 when the movie was filmed were considerably lower, I can estimate that the missing games would have cost him somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2,200.  If this was represented 9% of Jays total budget, then he started with around $24, 444 .  However, we must keep in mind that he bought in bulk and therefore received a discount, and the store owners saw an opportunity to advertise their store on Jay’s movie, and thus gave him a much lower price then any of us would ever get… like at A&C Games.  With this in mind, and considering he received some of the most expensive games for free, I think it is safe to say that Jay spent somewhere between $15,000 – $18,000 on completing his NES collection.

I’m envious, jealous, and all that of Jay Bartlett for it really felt like he had a lot of fun on his quest.  Congratulations on completing such an awesome collection… now go pay off that mortgage!

Nintendo Joe

Some Interesting Videos

 

A special thanks goes out to the Sega Dude for designing the new banners here at mynintendodimension.  They look amazing and really make this blog much cooler!

In other news… well I don’t really have much to add this week… darn budget!  I did however come across a few youtube videos that I found really interesting so I thought I would share them.  He calls himself the Gaming Historian and does a decent job at covering some interesting topics.

Like this one on the history of Super Mario 2.

Or this one on the battle between Atari and Nintendo

Sega Corner:  of course we can’t let this important part of the blog be ignored.  Thus I’ve included a youtube video of how my beloved Mega Man ended up on the Sega Genesis and Game Gear.  The one on the Genesis looks really cool, and it is a shame I can only get a reproduction cart.  In fact I saw a repro cart at Replay FX last July…. but I didn’t pull the trigger.  Hopefully there will be a next time:)