The God’s Must be Crazy!

The Original Flintstones for $440?

Now I know for sure that the video game God’s have gone completely insane… JJgames.com was charging $440USD for the Flintstones:  Rescue of Dino and Hoppy several weeks ago!  The game usually sells for no more than $20, and that’s pushing it as the title isn’t rare, and isn’t that good!

I’d like to say that JJgames got it wrong, and realized their error in that it wasn’t Surprise at Dinosaur Peak, but here we have the reduced price of $90USD for the same game a few weeks later?!  I’ve ordered from these guys before as if you really scan their website there occasionally is a deal to be had… but 99% of the time I feel that they way overcharge… that being said they’ve been around for a long time, and if they are getting their asking price, more power to them!  In fact I no longer see this game on their website… does anyone want my copy of the original Flintstones for an unreasonable price?!

This is a screen shot from Lukiegames.com.  Again I’ve ordered from them before several years ago, but seeing as I only need rare titles for my NES collection I doubt I’ll be doing business with them again.  In the above picture, you can see that they are charging $276.47USD for Bubble Bobble 2.  This is actually a semi-reasonable price considering that it usually goes for around $300USD according to my collectors app, and videogamepricecharting.com.  I sent them a request to check the condition of the label, and they replied that they wouldn’t bother.  I requested again and told them that this isn’t a $5 game we are talking about… and was still rejected (reading between the lines I can infer that it isn’t even worth their effort)?!  WTF?!  Do they not care about customer service even for higher priced items?!  I want to be wined and dined for this kind of cash!

When I was in Miami several years ago I asked if I could see the Lukie Games warehouse, and was told that it wasn’t possible.  Here I am 1,500Km away from home, and they still wouldn’t accommodate me?!  It’s not a difficult decision to cut them off from my business and recommendations!  Suck it Lukie Games!

The trend on retro game prices still seems to be declining though… I can wait for my $400 copy of Little Samson!

Nintendo Joe

A Little of This A Little of That…

This week has been great for mynintendodimension.  I’ve made many acquisitions for the display cases.  I purchased 36 NES games from a dude named Flavio… perhaps the coolest name I’ve heard in quite some time… I may even name my gold fish after him?!  The other two fish in the tank are Cory and Trevor of Trailer Park Boys fame.  Notable titles that I picked up are The Terminator, Bubble Bobble, Journey to Silus (which apparently was originally supposed to be a Terminator game of which the company lost the license for… the last boss looks exactly like a CSM-101), and Punch out… I already have Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, but not this variation of the same game… probably the best sports game made on the NES… I usually hate sports games.

I also made my way to Peterborough/Lakefield area last weekend and made a major score.  For $40 I got my hands on a great copy of Phantasy Star IV.  Obviously not a Nintendo game, but one of the greatest Sega Genesis games of all time… which was a relief because part III was bloody awful… I still want it though:(

Also purchased from the Lakefield flea market where a copy of Terminator 2, Castelian, Kickle Cubicle, Pinball Quest and Rock ‘n Ball for the NES… the last three of which were thrown in for free as I was buying several games.  Fred (the owner of the booth) is awesome like that and I love doing business with him and hope he stays around for a good long while! I also got a copy of Blazeon for the SNES from him. At $28 it is a lot of money, but not when you consider it is usually listed at $36.  While Fred had two other rare games (Metal Storm, and Mighty Final Fight), I just couldn’t justify spending what he wanted for them… close to $250.  My wife would kill me if I spent this much on two games… even if they are rare and great!

From a store in Peterborough called Chumleighs I managed to score a copy of the elusive Thunder Spirits (which is basically just Thunder Force III on the SNES with two additional levels) which I’m rather excited about.  And at the  Value Village I bought complete copies of Conduit I & II for the Wii… yay!

Yes I’ve been spending a lot of money lately… but I’ve also been selling some stuff for a profit… or loss depending on how you look at it as I reinvest it into my Nintendo display in my basement.  At Value Village my wife found a mini arcade version of Donkey Kong for $25.  I sold it on Kijiji to a guy for $75 which seems to be the going rate.  I’ve also gotten a few bites on an extra N64 I’m trying to get rid of.  It works great and comes with the memory expansion… and is priced at $65 which is far cheaper than any other ad on Kijiji for the same thing.  It isn’t moving though… perhaps people just aren’t interested in the 64… Not that I blame them as the system is my least favourite of all Nintendo consoles.

In other news, I’ve finished modifying all 200 cases and cut out all the covers for my NES games.  This puts me approximately half way finished with my collection to date.  It’s a ton of work, and while not expensive per case (approx. $2 including printing costs) does add up when you are doing so many.  I’ve been trying to do 5 cases a day for the last while, and it is amazing how fast time flies!  After I get some shelving to put all my games on I’ll make another post.

Sega Corner:  There has been a little bit of additions to the honorary Sega department.  The infamous Sega Dude gave me a really good copy of Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System.  Unfortunately I have to hook up my SMS in order to play it and I’m just to darn lazy.  I’ll wait until I get the Power Base Converter for my Retron 5… I’m told this will be expensive though so I may have to rethink my strategy.  I may end up wrapping Phantasy Star up and giving it to myself as a Christmas present from Santa… Somehow he always knows what to give me!  Also purchased from Flavio (the guy mentioned above) was a great copy of the SMS game Golvellius: Valley of Doom, and Fantazy Zone II… both games of which are awesome and I can’t wait to play.

Speaking of Fantasy Zone, I was watching a youtube video of a guy playing the arcade version… and remembered why I didn’t like it much as a kid.  The arcade is WAY more difficult than the Master System version!  You can check it out here at Fantasy Zone and Fantasy Zone II.  I must take my hat off to this guy as clearly he has some major talent!

Until next time,

Nintendo Joe