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!

 

Waiting for the Big Score!

First of all, I promise that I won’t mention the NFL in this post.  Even though I love it, and NFL Sundays are my favorite day of the week, I realize that many of you don’t share the same passion.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, my friend Pat the NES Punk predicts that the prices of rare NES games are going to come drastically down.  This is good news because there is no way I’m paying what they want for these few titles.  I also agree with Pat when he says that Little Samson isn’t nearly as “rare” as people claim it is.  I see it at almost every game swap that I go to, and never once have I ever seen a sale.  This tells me that people aren’t interested.  I mean according to Video Game Price Charting, the game goes for over $1400CAN… and JJgames.com is charging $1785US, give me a break dude!  Pat predicts the game will go down to around the $400 mark.  I’m still not happy (and maybe never will be), but at least I don’t have to sell both kidneys to purchase it!  So yeah,  I’m going to hold out for the most expensive games… even if I have to wait several years.  My collection thus far is awesome, and will have to do for the foreseeable future.  I still look forward to going to game swaps and stores, however I will not be bringing in wads of cash.  My soul is for sale though if that means anything to you!

My over the air PVR came in the mail the other day. It is a Mediasonic Homeworx model and cost $80CAN after shipping.  This is just the basic model, but from what I can tell the only thing that separates it from the much more expensive version is that it can’t record more than one show at once.  Who cares as I hardly watch network TV anyways!  It took me a while to set up as the instructions for how to record were very poor.  However thanks to my nerd skills and a couple of beers I was able to figure it out.  I can now watch regular TV on a slight delay and skip the commercials!  I didn’t think it could be done, but Judge Judy just got even better!  Give ’em hell Judith!

The other day I was picking up a package from the post office, and when I got back into my car, this teenage punk started staring at me like he wanted to fight.  He started staring at me… I mean right bloody at me!  Now I’m not one for violence, but at the end of the day I’m just another bloke with a pool cue… (this line was inspired by Francis Begbie from the movie Trainspotting and has been made appropriate for family viewers… the real version is much better though!).  Anyways we traded glares and went on our separate ways.  I don’t think I project the image of as tough guy who wants to fight, but then again I have Scottish/Irish in my blood so who knows?!  I can honestly say that in my 43 years of life, I’ve been lucky enough to never have gotten into a real fight in my personal life (karate doesn’t count as it is controlled).  I just can’t help but wonder why this kid wanted to have anything to do with me?  Teenage angst I suppose.  Anyways it gave me a good rush!

I’m getting pretty tired of YouTube commercials… especially now that they are doubling up in hopes of getting paid subscribers!  That being said, I have released my latest update on an edit to a film that I feel makes it far superior to the original.  My thing is this… Star Wars:  The Last Jedi in my opinion was the absolute WORST of the franchise… even Phantom Menace was better.  This was just pure crap, so what I did was edit out all the bad parts, and although my version is much shorter, I do believe it is superior!  If Disney is looking for some redirection, the Sega Dude and I are ready to quit our jobs and come on over to give you a hand on saving the franchise!

Until next time,

Nintendo Joe

The Reason I Sale

Last weekend myself and several friends went garage sailing as the area my parents live in was having their annual garage sale event.  Honestly, the pickings were really slim this year.  It seems to have been in decline every year for the decade that I’ve been going to this event.  The odd common Wii game here, and a copy of Namco Museum for the GBA was all that there was… in other words there was nothing even remotely interesting to look at, let alone talk about on here.  Who knew that at approximately 11:00am I would strike gold!

I found a box of gaming paraphernalia with the above sign taped to it at an unassuming older couple’s house.

The first thing in the box that caught my eye was a PS1 console and the above games.  Nothing to write home about as even though these games are complete, they along with the console are fairly worthless.  So I dug a little deeper…

Ahhh… some SNES manuals.  Not pictured is a sealed copy of all the manuals for the SNES console.  I already have these, but something told me to dig deeper and so I did…

Complete mint in box copies of the above games were found.  Now we’re talking!  Generally I don’t keep boxes unless they are for a really good game, however I already have a copy of F-Zero and I’m not interested at all in Extra Innings.  I used to love to play baseball, but playing the video game versions (regardless of the platform) always seemed really boring.  The Sega Dude expressed interest in having these so I’m going to give them to him.  Now that I was hot on the trail, I kept digging…

What’s this… Turbo Grafx-16 games?!  Even though these are sports titles, you never see games for the TG-16 any more.  In fact this is the first I have ever seen them at a garage sale… and I have been to a lot of sales!  However, this is fools gold compared to the 24K rock that I found at the bottom of the box…

Holy Toledo a Turbo Express and a copy of Bonk’s Adventure!!!  Now we’re talking!  When I first saw this I knew I had stuck gold.  I knew it was expensive but didn’t know just how valuable this was.  I figured it would sell for around $150, but after the Sega Dude told me that the Retro Game Bros. have it currently for sale with a price tag of $500 I was floored!  Can you say Cha-Ching!  I have zero interest in collecting for what is probably one of the most difficult systems to collect for, but I may be able to sell this and buy a really rare NES game that I otherwise wouldn’t have any business owning.  I’m going to keep this for a while to check it out… and see if this puppy actually works.  I don’t understand why it is so valuable as it is just a bulky hand held system with a REALLY small screen, but for some reason people are looking for these.

So, I’m $10 poorer than I was when I set out last Saturday, but I feel very lucky!  I scored huge!

SEGA Corner:  The events described above didn’t happen exactly as I told it… in fact I didn’t even see the sign that said it was all for $10.  I saw the mint SNES boxed games first, and then the Turbo Express… and I knew I had to have it.  When the guy came out asking for only $10 I was giddy with adrenaline.  The other games were just a bonus… if only the previous owner wasn’t such a sports fan but rather was into RPG’s instead:(  Oh well I shouldn’t complain… but there was one more find in that good box…

It’s not very exciting… maybe even a bit of a let down compared to the rest, but I’m going to mention it anyway to keep SEGA Corner alive.

Until next time,

Nintendo Joe