Happy Holidays!

Happy holidays everyone.  I just got back from visiting my relatives in Buffalo N.Y., so of course I had to stop by all the local game stores as the prices in the U.S. are much cheaper than up here in Canada.  My wife was happy to accompany me (actually she waited in the car and read her book while i conducted my business).

Here is a picture of all my loot.  Most of the titles are just common games, but there are a couple that I’m rather excited to have.  Star Trek, Thunderbirds, and Hudson Hawk are games I look forward to adding to the collection… even though they aren’t the best games out there.  River City Ransom is a title that speaks for itself.  I paid $25 for it, but that is a deal considering i’ve never seen it up here for less than $45.  Basically it is a beat em up like Double Dragon except that it has a role play element to it as well that involves beating guys up and taking their money to buy food to eat (this would level you up and make you more powerful).  It sounds kind of dumb, but this added much more fun to the beat em up experience as generally I’m not such a big fan of this genre.  The other cool pick up was Donkey Kong Classics which is basically just a compilation of the original Donkey Kong & Donkey Kong Jr. on the NES… both of which I already have, but the artwork is much better on this version… plus I got it for cheap so give me a break!

I was out in Oshawa (see more details for this later on Sega Corner) and went to a local game store called G.A.M.E.S..  I’m not really sure why the store made the word “games” into an acronym which makes even less sense when you consider each letter doesn’t stand for anything.  Oh well, this store is not bad in terms of prices for some of their loot.  I wanted to get E.V.O., but of course this game is rare and carries with it a hefty price tag.  If I remember correctly the guy wanted close to $230 for it… ya right!

Anyways while I was out there I decided to gamble and take a chance on Super Nova (the sequel to Darius Twin).  Overall the game is quite good… again not as good as Thunder Force due to lack of power ups, but both the graphics and music are quite good.  There is also no slowdowns which are known to plague SNES shooters which is always a bonus.  The game is challenging, and has some replay value to it as you choose the path on which to reach the end (I’ve only made it to the level B or C option)

I’m not going to make a big deal about this game other than I only I offered the guy $10 for it, and he counter-offered me at $8.  Weird, but the game is in good condition and works. SOLD!

I don’t know much about this next game, but the store that sold it to me had it for only $7 when it normally goes for $15 complete.  As I’m always looking for a deal, how could I pass that up?  Maybe the game sucks, but it is complete and looks nice on my shelf.  Admittedly I never got into the Final Fantasy series as a kid as I was more into the less popular Phantasy Star franchise, which in my opinion are much better games as they actually connect to one another… unlike Final Fantasy where one game has nothing to do with the next.

 

Heidi’s Retro Game Room

So this brings us to our first ever guest of the month.  This girl (crazy I know) goes by the name of Heidi and lives somewhere in Sweden.  Fortunately for us in North America her blogs are all in English.  Unfortunately all her videos are in Swedish so I don’t understand a thing other than the game titles:(  Anyways I highly recommend you check out her site.  This girl (again crazy but true) has the best retro game collection that I have ever seen.  She collects pretty much everything from Virtual Boy to Turbo Grafx and has obviously been at it for many years.  Heidi, whoever you are, your game room rocks and I’m very jealous.  You make my collection look pitiful.  It’s all about the journey though… at least that’s what I keep telling myself as it helps me sleep at night.

Sega Corner: A special thanks to the Sega Dude for hooking me up with a guy that was selling both Thunder Force 3 and Lightening Force (Thunder Force 4) for the Sega Genesis.  Both of these games are part of what is in my opinion the best shooters out there.  Thunder Force 3 was a tad bit easy to beat… but the music and graphics were killer!  What was challenging was to beat the game with only one ship.  I did manage to do this, but only after many months of practice.  Lightening Force is a bit more advanced graphically (though this can also be more distracting too) and is much more difficult.  The enemies bosses look awesome however are very tough.  So I picked these games up from a guy way out in Ajax.  He was late and I didn’t feel like waiting around so I went to the aforementioned store G.A.M.E.S. and did a little shopping. Unfortunately he didn’t have what I was looking for but I always enjoy going in for a look-see… no I’m not one of those annoying guys that talks the ears off the store employees like they give a hoot.  I’ve got nothing good to say and am trying to get the games for as little money as possible.  Their job is to try and get as much cash out of me as possible.  To put it another way, our conversations basically just involve throwing numbers around like we are some sort of big shots (we aren’t).

On that note, have an awesome holiday.  Hopefully you’ll get (and give) lots of retro games to tell me about:)  Later skater,

Nintendo Joe.

 

Video Game Collector Community

The Video Game Collector Community (VGCC) puts on a twice annual video game swap event in Waterloo Ontario.  You can check out a video link of the event here.  My first time there was last September where the Sega Dude and I had a vendors table.  I thought we did quite well… so much so that i didn’t have enough inventory to justify getting another dealer table.  Instead, we both went with a back pack and a list of what we had to trade.  Of course I lost my list at a dealer table within the first 5 minutes of arriving:(  This is what happens when I get REALLY excited… i get stupid.  This is also what cut my Street Fighting career short: I just got too excited at the prospect of becoming world champion that i would forget my own name.  This brings up something else.  The Sega Dude told me that I need a name for myself in this blog.  He suggested Nintendo Dude, but really, there can be only one Dude and he has claim to that.  I was thinking of going generic with something like “Nintendo Joe”, but that isn’t really very creative and a million other people probably already have that name.  Oh well, for now anyways the name is Joe.

So I was able to come back from the Waterloo swap meet with a pretty good score:

Now settle down.  Please let me explain the bottom photo.  Yes I did spend $15 on a mint copy of Thunderforce II for the Sega Genesis but I had no choice!  I used to have it way back in the day when Genesis first came out and I was really good at it… admittedly not as good as some of the people i’ve seen on youtube finish it with one life:(  It might have been the only thing that I was ever really good at, so it has a bit of sentimental value to me.  Plus, even though it’s a Sega game, it’s really kick ass!  They have made several sequels to a game (Thunderforce) of which no one seems to remember the original.  I did a little looking around and found out that the original game was released by Technosoft in 1983 for the Sharp X1 computer.  Basically the story is about the struggles of the Galactic Federation agains the Orn empire.  The first game was an overhead shooter and was pretty brutal compared to it’s sequels, but considering the year it came out it’s not that bad.  Thunderforce III was one of the first games that I bought, and if i remember correctly I spent $90 for the Mega Drive version of the game before it was released here in north America.  I look back on that and am astounded how much the games used to cost, and more importantly where a 14 year old kid gets that kind of money.  I must have delivered hundreds of newspapers to save up for this game.  What’s scary is that I had several games…. though once i hit 16 and got my first real job as a janitor on the weekends, not only were the games cheaper, but i also had the money to buy them.  That’s how i afforded my SNES back in the day.  So while Genesis may not be Nintendo, they did make some pretty kick ass games including the Phantasy Star series which is probably my favourite thing Sega ever produced.  Thunder Spirits on the SNES is basically just Thunderforce III with a few added levels.  The good news is that the cart sells for only around $9 so it should be in my collection before long.

The other titles that I picked up I either bought or traded for.  I ordered 200 universal game cases to store my NES and SNES games in.  I was told last night that I’m out of my mind if i print the covers out myself… i think i told you in an earlier post on where to find them, but so you don’t have to go routing around in my old blogs, i’ll give you the link again.  It is a site called thecoverproject.net and has the covers of most systems (including handheld systems such as the Game Boy Advance, or DS.  In fact I found that the old DS cases have a slot on the inside that Fits GBA games.  At the swap i bought a few of those to put my GBA games in.  I’ve printed some of the covers and they turned out great.  I don’t know why Nintendo didn’t release their games in clam cases like Sega did?!  Like it or not, Sega had this right, and it amazes me how many Sega games I see loose.  Where did the hard box go?  It’s what made keeping Sega games in good condition easy… and it looks nice.  So now I’m buying universal game cases, and printing out my own covers, or rather pay staples $0.40 per page to do it for me.  My goal is to have my collection all cased up by the end of the summer.  It might be a pipe dream, but it is something to strive for:)

 

Nintendo Joe (for now)

Super Metroid Comes Home!

My dear friend the sega dude (pictured above) has been collecting games since university back in the mid 90’s and he has built up quite an impressive display.  As his name indicates, he is primarily into Sega/Mega Drive, but occasionally he’ll dabble some NES/SNES.  While I haven’t been collecting for nearly as long, we felt that we had acquired too many doubles thus when we stumbled upon the VGCC.ca seasonal swap meet, we were quick to sign up for an exhibitor table.  Even though we were so late in signing up, the convenors were friendly enough to squeeze us in!  At $25 per table, this was a bargain!  Interestingly enough the guy who had the table beside us had bought games from me before at on of my yard sales this past summer… small world.  My quest in at going to this event was to bring home a copy of Super Metroid, however there were only two vendors at the entire event that had a single copy each… and one was only using it as a display… he was taunting me!  However with a lot of verbal harassment (and and i mean A LOT!) he finally caved and sold it to me for $45.  This was a tad more than I wanted to pay, but I couldn’t turn it down because it is my favourite game for the SNES and I haven’t even physically played it…. ever… that’s how good this game really is.

I was able to pick up a few other titles… most notably Final Fantasy and Ultima: Quest of the Avatar for $25 total.  I’m not really sure about the Ultima game as I’ve never played (or seen it played) before.  However it is an RPG so I figured I would give it a shot.  Maybe I’ll write a review of it in a later posting.  Final Fantasy is a classic that goes without saying.  

The Sega Dude told me I should use this site as a bit of a trading post.  Back in university, he had a site and if I remember correctly he did quite well… made a lot of contacts, and was able to get some good trades.  Maybe he was onto something.  The games I’m looking for are pretty standard:  Anything with Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man, Mario, etc..  I’m missing 4 & 5 of the NES Mega Man, and all of the X games.  True, I have a copy of Rockman X, but that doesn’t really count.

The hunt for games must go on!